URL DISSECTION

What do the different parts of a web address mean?

2022-02-17 -

1 SCHEME

This tells your browser what rules to use: ‘http’ is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The ‘s’ means secure.

2 AUTHORITY

This tells your browser who you want to talk to. It’s usually a domain name, but it can also be an IP address.

3 RESOURCE NAME

This is the name of the resource you want it to access – in this case a web page about computer history.

4 PATH TO RESOURCE

Words separated by forward slashes make up the path to the resource you are looking for on the web server.

5 HOSTNAME

This label identifies the computer or server that your request is going to. The convention for web servers is ‘www’.