URL View
Short for Uniform Resource Locator, a URL or Internet address is a form of URI and is a standardized naming convention for addressing documents accessible over the Internet or Intranet. An example of a URL is http://www.designscan.me, which is the URL for the DesignScan website. Below is additional information about each of the sections of the http URL for this page.
The http:// stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol and enables the browser to know what protocol it is going to use to access the information specified in the domain.
Next, www. that stands for World Wide Web, is used to distinguish the content. This portion of the URL is not required, and many times can be left out. For example, typing “http://designscan.me” would still get you to the DesignScan web page. This portion of the address can also be substituted for an important sub page known as a subdomain. For example, http://support.microsoft.com is the support section of Microsoft’s page.
Next, designscan.me is the domain name for the website. The last portion of the domain is known as the “domain suffix” or TLD and is used to identify the type or location of website. For example, .com is short for commercial, .org is short for organization, and .co.uk is United Kingdom.
Next, the support and wiki portions of the above URL are the directories of where on the server the web page. In this example, the web page is two directories deep, so if you were trying to find the file on the server it would be in the /public_html/support/wiki directory.
Finally, url.html is the actual web page on the domain you’re viewing. The trailing .html is the file extension of the web page that indicates the file is an html file. Other common file extensions on the Internet include .php, .asp, .cgi, .XML, .jpg, and .gif. Each of these file extensions performs a different function, just like all the different types of files on your computer.