PC101-Personal
Computer 101
What is a URL
or
internet address and how do I use them?
Think of an Internet Address (URL:Uniform Resource Locator)
as you would a house in the woods. The the house is built and has
a legitimate address then it is eligible to get mail from the Post
Office. The same is true for URL's, i.e. once the website is
built (loaded to the internet) and has a legitimate internet address,
then it is eligible for people to visit it.
However, just like the house, if no one knows where it is, then it will
not get visits or mail. Someone just driving around might
find the house and note the address (e.g. a Real Estate agent), as well
as someone randomly surfing might find the website (e.g. a Search Engine Spider) and register
the website into it's database.
(A Search
Engine spider is an
internet program whose purpose is to go to website addresses (URL's)
and list any webpages it finds there in the Search Engine
database. Normally this happens due to a request by the website
owner to the Search Engine to be listed with that Search Engine.)
Imagine, in you would, that the house is for sale and the owner puts a
For Sale sign up in the front yard. Since no one knows that
the house is For Sale it is very unlikely that the owner will get much
response to his sign. However, if he or she gets it listed
in the Realtor Multiple Listing Service, suddenly all the Real Estate
agents know about it, where it is and what the owner wants for his
house.
The same is true for the internet. Just putting the website
on the internet does little to let others know it is there.
Adding the URL to Search Engines, Bulletin Boards, Chat Rooms, FFA's,
listing services, etc. allows others to know of its existence and
address on the internet.
WHAT MAKES UP AN INTERNET ADDRESS:
e.g.
http://www.sykart.com/keenie/index.html
Pretty much every part of the example URL above
can vary, e.g. the
beginning "http" might be
"https" and indicate a Secure Server for processing credit card
purchases. The "www"
stands for "World Wide Web". Next would normally be the Domain
Name, in this case sykart,
which is an internet name location that a company, organization or
person registers as their unique location on the web. The .com generally specifies what type
of site this is or its location, e.g. .net=network/isp
.com=company
.org=organization
.co.uk=United Kingdom
.gov=government
.au=australia
.edu=educational
institution .ca=Canada
The next term after the "/" is
normally the directory on the server where the files are stored, in
this case "/keenie".
And although there maybe more directories or even internet commands
passed to the display after this, the finally part "index.html" is the actually web page
that is to be displayed on your screen. The suffix ".html" generally indicates what
internet language the file is written in, i.e. html in this case.
(For information on how 
email addresses
work, click here)
Got
questions you would like answered? Yes
keoni@isp.com