Understanding Web Page Addresses

Understanding Web Page Addresses

When you visit a web page, you type in a web address, also known as a URL (uniform resource locator) . That URL contains precise instructions on where that page is located on a specific web server. The URL can be simplejust the name of a site, such as http://www.samspublishing.com. Or it can be much more complicated, and point to a specific location on that site, such as http://www.samspublishing.com/title/0672326906.

KEY TERM

URL (uniform resource locator) An Internet address that uniquely identifies a location on the Internet, such as http://www.google.com.

There's method behind the seeming madness of the confusion of slashes , characters , and dots that make up a URL. As you'll see as you use this book, you'll need to understand that method in order to build your website. This image shows you a URL with all the parts labeled.

The parts of a URL .

• Protocol This determines what kind of Internet protocol should be used. For the Web, it's HTTP.

• Domain name This directs the browser to the proper web server on the Internet. Behind the scenes, DNS is translating that domain into IP numbers . Note the first three letters in front of the domain, www.

• Pathname This identifies the directory on the server where the page is located.

• Filename This is the file itself that the browser is looking for. The file has to end in a .htm or .html extension for the browser to recognize it as a web page.

So, when someone types this URL into a browser, it uses the HTTP protocol to connect to the samspublishing.com server, and gets the allin1.htm web page in the /books directory. Note that this URL is an imaginary one, so it won't workwe use it here only as a fictional example.