Uniform Resource Locator

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is another name for a web address. It is a simpler way to remember the identity of a computer on the Internet. URLs often contain www. (which stands for World Wide Web). URLs consist of several parts:

• A protocol. Very often, this is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
• Some separation characters: ://
• The address of the host

In some cases, the URL may also contain

• The path to a document or script.
• In the case of a script, additional parameters
• Username and password needed to access a certain page

The URL of this page is http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uniform_Resource_Locator

• http is the protocol
• simple.wikipedia.org is the web site
• /w/index.php is a script. That script gets parameters, title=Uniform_Resource_Locator

[edit] Extensions

These are at the end of the domain name which has a period mark before it. At first there were six main extensions:

• .com - Commercial use
• .net - network / Internet Service Provider use
• .org - Organizational use
• .edu - Educational use (Schools and universities)
• .mil - Military use
• .gov - Governmental use

Today, there are many other URL extentions. These are usually either a top level domain or interest grouping. Each country has its own top level domain, for example, .ca for Canada. Interest group domains would include .tv (television) and .xxx (Pornography). These are not used as often as the original extensions.