What is an URL?
URL stands for:
Uniform Resource Locator
A URL is the way people find your blog or Web site. It is the uniform way to locate a file (a resource) on the Internet. Really, all it is, is a fancy name for web page address. It tells a browser where a file is, and what to do with it. A unique URL belongs to each file on the Internet.
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The URL is the unique address by which a file can be found on a web site. A visitor to your Web site will use an URL and software called a browser (like the common Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers) to retrieve a file of your Web site from the server of your web host, and display that file in their browser. |
Here is the URL used to view this blog post that you’re reading:
http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/what-is-an-URL/
As you can see, a URL is made up of words (usually!) that are easy for humans to read, understand, and remember (usually and hopefully!).
For computers, URLs are really made up of a set of four groups of numbers separated by periods. This is known as an Internet Protocol (IP) Address. An example of an IP Address is: 64.202.189.170 which happens to be the IP Address of www.wpblogsandwebsites.com.
An overly simple explanation of Internet Protocol Address is that it is the numerical label that is assigned to a URL. Since these IP Address numbers are really too difficult and cumbersome for human beings to read and remember, they are instead associated with an alphanumeric form so we human types can more easily remember and use Web site addresses. People usually find it easier to remember a short string of words, rather than a list of numbers.
The alphabetic and numeric versions of a web site’s URL are reconciled through the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). DNS translates the alphanumerical address to the numeric, which is the way non-human things such as computers, browsers, and servers prefer a Web site’s address to be represented. The DNS works for you in the background as you surf the Internet.
Let’s examine the fictitious URL of:
http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/how-to-blog.html
The format of a URL looks like this:
Protocol://site address/path/filename
So, the http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/how-to-blog.html example URL breaks down as:
- Protocol: http
- Host computer name: www
- Domain name: wpblogsandwebsites
- Domain type: com
- Path: /blog
- File name: how-to-blog.html
If you see an URL like: http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/ where no file name is part of the URL, then a default file will displayed by the browser. Usually the default file is something like index.html, index.htm, or maybe index.php.
There are different types of Protocols. All web pages will use some type of Protocol to transfer their data. HTTP is the most common. HTTP means HyperText Transport Protocol and it is the common way hypertext documents (web pages) are served, or transferred, over the Internet.
While the com domain type is the most familiar, there are other types of domains. Listed below are some of them:
- com: commercial entities
- net: networks or network providers
- org: organizations that are usually non-profit
- edu: education, used for colleges and universities
- gov: government
- mil: United States military entities
To get your own URL for your blog or Web site, you must register a domain name. Learn about domain names on this page: Get Your Own Domain Name.
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