What is URL?

 

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator), as the name suggests, provides a way to locate a resource on the web, the hypertext system that operates over the internet. The URL contains the name of the protocol to be used to access the resource and a resource name. The first part of a URL identifies what protocol to use. The second part identifies the IP address or domain name where the resource is located.A URL is the most common type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). URIs are strings of characters used to identify a resource over a network.

URL protocols include HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTTPS (HTTP Secure) for web resources, "mail to" for email addresses, "ftp" for files on a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, and telnet for a session to access remote computers.

All URLs are presented in the following order:

• Scheme name
• Colon and two slashes
• Location of the server
• The port (optional) and the location of the resource on the server
• Fragment identifier (optional)

Below is additional information about each of the sections of the http URL for this page.

https://aywenz.com/services.html

• http:// or https://

The "http" stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and is what enables the browser to know what protocol it is going to use to access the information specified in the domain. An "https" protocol is short for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure" and indicates that information transmitted over HTTP is encrypted and secure. After the http or https is the colon ( : ) and two forward slashes ( // ) that separate the protocol from the remainder of the URL.

• www.

Next, "www" stands for World Wide Web and 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://aywenz.com " would still get you to the aywenz web page. This portion of the address can also be substituted for an important sub page known as a sub domain.

• aywenz.com

Next, "aywenz.com" 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 the website. For example, ".com" is short for commercial, ".org" is short for an organization, and ".co.uk" is the United Kingdom. There are dozens of other domain suffixes available. To get a domain, you would register the name through a domain registrar.

• /services/

Next, the "services" portion of the above URL are the directories of where on the server the web page is located. 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/ services/ directory. With most servers, the public_html directory is the default directory containing the HTML files.

• .html

Finally .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 .html, .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.

What characters are not allowed in a URL?

Most people realize that a space is not allowed in a URL. However, it is also important to realize, as documented in RFC 1738, the URL string can only contain alphanumeric characters and the !$-_+*'(), characters. Any other characters that are needed in the URL must be encoded.

courtesy: http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/URL

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