What is a URL?
http://www.policy.hu/inetclass/Whatis_URL.html
- http://
- This identifies the type of protocol
used to read Web pages. It's the same for virtually every page so you really
don't need to be concerned with it. You don't even need to include this
section in entering a URL because your browser assumes that you're looking
for an "http" page. The two slashes are forward slashes, not
to be confused with back slashes used in DOS path names. In reading an
address, just say "slash".
- www.
- While a browser can access other types of pages besides Web pages (for
example, FTP sites), 99% of the pages you will be accessing will be Web pages
and, therefore, most sites will have "www" as the next part of
their address. However, some Web sites don't include "www" in
their address, so they go right from "http://" to the next part.
Here comes our first "dot", which is how major parts of the address
are separated.
- policy.
- This is called the domain name, which identifies the main server on
which the page is located. Commercial sites register a domain name with
an organization called InterNIC
for their exclusive use. If you're looking at a URL for someone's personal
home page, the domain name will be that of their Internet service provider.
Note that the domain name is followed by another "dot".
hu/
- Next you will see a code which identifies what type of site the domain
is. These are the basic types:
- com - commercial
- edu - educational institution
- gov - governmental body
- org - nonprofit organization
- mil - military
- net - network
- hu, si, cz, pl, bg, su - international country domains
After this section of the URL, you see a slash rather than a dot, which
is the way to distinguish the directories and files within the domain.
inetclass/
We have organized all the pages relating to the Web course in a subdirectory
we called "inetclass" which is on the "policy.hu" server. This is where an individual's name would show
up if you were looking at the address for a personal web page.
(There may also be subdirectories within subdirectories. Each would be followed
by a slash.)
Whatis_URL.
This is the name given to this page about URLs in the "inetclass"
subdirectory. When you finally reach the name of the actual page, it is
followed by another dot.
html
This is the final code that tells the browser to interpret the document
as a Web page. "html" stands for HyperText Markup Language, the code used to define the look and behavior of a web page.
If the page was created
on a Windows computer, it may be shortened to "htm".
[I-net Class Home Page]
Created 4-Mar-98
Merrill Oates Oates@policy.hu
Last Modified 6.03.2002
URL: <http://www.policy.hu/inetclass/Whatis_URL.html>
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