The abbreviation URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. For the first time, this term was used in 1990. The glory of such an invention belongs to the creator of the World Wide Web – Tim Berners-Lee. Nowadays resources like pr posting pay a lot of attention to the structures of URLs and here we are going to discuss it closer.
What is URL?
The URL was originally used to indicate the location of files on the Internet but is now also utilized to indicate the location of almost all web resources. A URL can be a path to a website or a specific document or image. To go to the desired site or file, the user needs to write the corresponding URL in the address bar of the browser.
Determining the URL of a web page is simple – it is shown in the address bar of the browser. From there, you can copy it by right-clicking on the address bar and selecting the Copy command from the context menu.
Then the whole url structure will end up in the clipboard, from where it can be pasted into the address bar of the browser, forwarded in a message, or pasted into a text document.
URL Structure
The URL that we see in the address bar of the browser consists of several parts:
- The protocol is always indicated at the beginning of the address (in some browsers, it may be hidden by default and becomes visible when you click on the address bar). If we are viewing a web page, it will be the http data transfer protocol or its https form, with encryption support to establish a secure connection.
However, the URL may start with other designations, such as:
- ftp – the browser will open the file server;
- mailto – the browser will execute the command to send a letter to the specified address;
- file – the file will be opened in the browser from the computer.
- The protocol is followed by the site’s domain name (host) or, in rare cases, its IP address. Also, in some cases, the URL may contain a port number, for example, it can be seen in network applications.
- Then the path to the page is specified, consisting of directories and subdirectories, which, in turn, includes its name.
- The URL can also include parameters that are specified after the ? and are separated by the & character.
- The final component of a URL that a user might see in long, multi-section documents is the anchor, preceded by a sign #. The part of the address after this sign refers to a specific paragraph within the site page.
These are the main components that are important for the proper URL structure.