All About URLs

Parts of the URL | Guessing URLs | Shortening URLs

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator (formerly Universal Resource Locator). It is the Internet address which tells a browser where to find a resource.

EXAMPLE: http://www.wvu.edu/~students/personalwp/suz.html

Parts of the URL

(1) How to get it: http:// (protocol/data source)

short for hyper-text transfer protocol

means that the file you have requested is in hypertext form

found at the beginning of most addresses of files on the web

(2) Where to get it: www.wvu.edu (domain name)

indicates where the hypertext file is coming from

www means World Wide Web

wvu is short for West Virginia University

edu is short for educational
other upper-level domains include:

.ac academic	.co or .com commercial	.gov governmental
.mil military	.net Internet Service Providers	.org non-profit organizations
.plc Public Limited Company	.sch school

(3) Exactly where to get it : /~students/personalwp/ (directory path)

there are many different sites and sections within the web site at WVU; the directory path tells us what section of WVU's web site the document file we are viewing is in

in this example, we are in the students' section
within this directory, we are looking at a file in a subdirectory named personalwp (short for personal web pages)

(4) What to get: suz.html (object name)

the name of the file itself

in this example, this is Susan U. Zane's personal web page

.htm or .html means that the file is a document formatted in Hypertext Markup Language

Guessing URLs

Becoming familiar with the way URLs are constructed will help you guess URLs.

Most Large companies have a registered domain name with .com at the end. You can guess the URL by typing a company name in the location window and hitting enter. Be sure not to put a space between company names with multiple words.

Example: Johnson & Johnson http://www.johnsonandjohnson.com/home.html

Universities in the United States usually end in .edu.

Example: WVU http://www.wvu.edu/indexflash.html

Many browsers supply the http://www and .com. You can frequently find sites by typing a familiar name in the location bar and hitting the enter key.

Truncating or shortening URLs

A search on the web may retrieve several documents from the same site

Instead of looking at the individual documents to find which one is most appropriate, truncate the URL at the point that seems to be likely to be a good match for your search

Type or copy this part of the URL into the location bar in your browser window and hit the enter key

Example:

You want to know Professor X's mailing address. A search for Professor X retrieves these files:

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/classes/physics10/fall/quizzes.htm

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/classes/physics10/fall/syllabus.htm

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/classes/home.htm

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/research/particlephysics/index.htm

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/research/particlephysics/links.htm

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/research/particlephysics/experiments.htm

Try shortening the URL from the right to:

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/

Enter the shorter address in your location bar, hit enter, and see if that leads you to Professor X's "home" page. If you were looking for the classes Professor X teaches, try:

http://www.wvu.edu/physics/professorx/classes/

Truncating can also work when you get the file not found message. Try removing the last part of the URL, the file name, from the address in the location bar and hit enter. You may be able to locate files related to the one you were looking for. If removing the file name does not work, try removing the next section back to the previous slash mark (/) and hit the enter key.