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13lettersinhere OP t1_j6cfvez wrote

Reply to comment by saintpetejackboy in ELi5 : If you can access a website, why cant you steal the source code and make a 1:1 copy of it? by 13lettersinhere

Bro forgot to explain like I’m 5

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AgentScreech t1_j6crng6 wrote

It's like if you stole a menu from a restaurant. You would know what it was supposed to make, but you don't have the kitchen or the cooks.

When you go to a website, you interact with the frontend (menu in this analogy). The "backend" is the thing that processes your request (kitchen) and returns the result to the frontend to be presented

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oldmansalvatore t1_j6clkdi wrote

Any website or app's source code is split into parts that you can access on your computer or browser (aka the client), and other parts that only exist on another large computer that your computer talks to (aka the server).

The parts on your client browser usually only outline what the website should look like, and how your browser should talk to the server computer. The real data you would access, and any calculations or other complicated stuff on your website, is largely stored and done on the server using the source code on the server.

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