URL Explained

The basis of the Web is hypertext, which uses tags to turn words and images into links that allow you to jump directly from one document to another. It allows you to link to other files no matter where those other files are located. They could reside on computers in the next room or down the street or half-way around the world from yours. The location doesn't matter.

Your web browser acts as a graphical interface between you and the Web. When you click on a link, it issues the necessary commands to request data from other computers, then interprets whatever comes back. Documents written in the standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) contain codes that tell web browsers what a document should look like. Besides formatting considerations, HTML also, of course, creates links to other pages and links to other headings in the current document.

Each file or document on the Web has a unique identifying address, a Uniform or Universal Resource Locator (URL). Since 1991, URLs have been used as the standard way to locate and to cite resources on the Web. Before looking at the anatomy of a URL, read about how they work on the web with a Domain Name Server (DNS).

URLs can look intimidating but understanding how they are put together helps them make more sense. One very important thing to remember is that URLs are case-sensitive, and like other internet addresses, every character counts. If you miss one capital letter, or a dot or a slash, you won't connect.

Each URL describes a particular path to a specific Internet resource. Using the following typical URL, we'll briefly analyze the components.

http://learn.westerntc.edu/mfo/crsindex.htm

  1. The part before the colon:
    In the example given above, http (hypertext transfer protocol) indicates that the file is a hypertext document (a document formatted in HTML).

  2. The part that follows the two forward slashes:
    This gives you the hostname or server name, where the file is located. In our example, the information is on the server learn. Often the server is called www because it is an organization's or company's world wide web server. Bigger companies and organizations, like Western, may have more than one web server, so they would each have an individual name.

  3. The part that follows the server name, learn:
    This is the domain name. In our case the westerntc.edu says that Western is an educational institution.

  4. The remainder of the URL following the first slash:
    The remainder describes the directory path to the particular resource, sometimes including navigating through multiple directories to reach, ultimately, the name of the file. Lucky for you, in our example, there are not a lot of directory levels. The site directory is mfo. There is no subfolder and the file name is crsindex. The extension (htm or html) of course, identifies it as a HyperText Markup Language file.

One other trick for understanding what a URL means, is to pay attention to the endings, the extension, of website addresses.


Before you follow these links, guess where they will lead you based on the URL.

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