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Simply put, a uniform resource locator (URL) is the address of an Internet document. Like a street address, it uses numbers and letters in a specific order to identify a document's location. For instance, if you see a street address, such as: You can infer that "Harry Pants" is a person who lives in the state of New York, in a town called Hellsville (mmm, had me some great fries once in Hellsville), in a region defined by the zip code 11439, and that his house is on Mockingbird Lane - number 666, specifically.Harry Pants 666 Mockingbird Lane Hellsville, New York 11439 Similarly, we can break down the parts of a URL. Let's take: http://www.hotwired.com/staff/mattmarg/index.html The first part of the URL, http://, indicates the type of file you're accessing. On the Web, this will almost always use the letters http (which stand for "hypertext transfer protocol," because that's the protocol used to transfe r Web pages). You'll occasionally see other acronyms or words in this space, including ftp, which stands for "file transfer protocol" (you'll primarily see this used to transfer software or other large files); telnet, which is used to log in to a remote computer - primarily for online "chat"; and file, which means the browser is reading a document off your local disk, rather than a remote computer. But let's get back to that URL. The next section of the address says www.hotwired.com. This is the host name, indicating that the file in question lives on a server named "www," which has been registered under the domain name "hotwired.com." Most companies have a designated server for their external Web site, called "www," so when you're hunting for a Web site, but aren't sure of the URL, it's a good bet to put "www" in front of the company's domain name. For example: www.borders.com or www.adobe.com. The last segment of the URL, /staff/mattmarg/index.html describes the specific path to the file in question ("index.html"). A slash indicates a new directory, so we can assume from this URL that the file "index.ht ml" is located in a directory called "mattmarg," which is located in a directory called "staff," which in turn is located on the server "www," registered to hotwired.com. | |||
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