Homepage. Home page. Home Page. In every variant of the spelling it is a singular noun. If one must go to the homepage of a corporation or institution you visit the homepage. However, for those of us that work day to day with websites, we often say something along the lines of, “that content is on the homepage.” The thing is, we don’t mean that it is literally on the homepage. We mean it is within the site that has a front door at ***.com.

There must be a better phrase, but those I’ve tried don’t seem to have traction. Home site, the collection of pages and posts, the company site. I believe that homepage is an anachronism of the early web and a better term is needed.

Now, I realize this position is rather thin, especially for small websites. However, as sites grow more complex or there are sites within sites within sites, this becomes important. I work at a university and if a department has a website, they refer to their homepage. That gets confusing as the department site is usually within a college site and homepage which is within the university homepage.

This has certainly been kicking around in my head for several months. Surprisingly, even Wikipedia has a lightweight discussion around the term. I don’t know what the answer is, maybe I just need to accept that homepage can mean many things but I am grasping for a concrete word or phrase that captures the idea of a main web property that exists for a brand.