What is meant by localhost ?
- 127.0.0.1 is localhost, it's the address of the current machine, accessed through a loopback interface (not through the network adapter - this works even if there is no network chips in the system).
- "Localhost" refers to the local computer that a program is running on.
- It is just a local server built on our own computer machine. Which can be used to host website locally for testing it.
- Localhost is often used in web scripting languages like PHP and ASP when defining what server the code should run from or where a database is located.
- In databases like SQL Server also we use localhost to represent our local computer.
What is WWW Root ?
- WWW Root is a virtual directory of IIS server. The IIS server runs the web-site deployed on the directory.
- IIS provides platform to run the web-site on the Internet, IIS takes request from user and search for the page on the wwwroot directory for that site and if found executes the required files and sends result back to the user.
- If we create a new web application, a virtual directory will be created in c:\inetpub\wwwroot.