A URL is:

Uniform Resource Locator

Specifies how and where to get any kind of information on the Internet

What you really need to know:

Type URL information accurately.

No typos.

Use upper and lower case as specified.

An example of a URL:

http://library.allegheny.edu/screens/gatemenu.html

Specifies three things:

protocol://host/path

In other words:

Protocol is the general method used to retrieve the information. In the example above http means a hypertext document on the World Wide Web.

Host refers to the specific computer at which the information is located. In this case the information is stored on a computer at Allegheny.

Path refers to where the information can be found on the host computer. In this example the information is in a file called gatemenu which is in a directory called screens.

Deciphering URLs:

Domains, the three letter extensions at the end of the host information, provide important information. The most common domains are com (commercial site), edu (educational site), org (nonprofit organization), and gov (government site). Here are some examples:

• http://www.allegheny.edu -- Allegheny's world wide website
• http://inside.allegheny.edu -- Another Allegheny site
• http://www.now.org -- The nonprofit National Organization of Women site
• http://memory.loc.gov -- The American Memory Project at the Library of Congress
• http://www.amazon.com -- The commercial bookseller Amazon

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http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/h/hmccull/fs/url.html
Last update: 25 October 2002