Parts of a URL address

Every page on the World Wide Web has it's own unique address. These are called URL's or Uniform Resource Locators. You can tell a lot about a page on the web by looking at the different parts of it's URL. You can tell the kind of organisation that has put it on the web, and the country the organisation is in. Let's look at this Lincoln University Library URL...

http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/libr/info.htm

Lincoln University's URL is
http://www.lincoln.ac.nz
http://

The protocol
you are using
(HyperText Transfer Protocol)

 www.lincoln

Name of the host computer
.ac

Domain name - the type of organisation hosting the web page.


.gov or .govt government agency
.edu or .ac educational institution
.co or .com commercial enterprise
.org organisation (non profit)
.net internet provider
.nz

Country code - the country of the host computer

.au Australia
.uk United Kingdom
none USA

After the first parts of the URL, which are usually separated by dots, the next part of the URL is usually the folders and files on that computer. In our example http://www.lincoln.ac.nz /libr/

The final part of a URL is the page you are looking for and it will have a name and usually either html or htm to say the page is written in html, the language of webpages. In our example http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/libr/info.htm

Return to the Step Four page to read the second part

This page is part of an online tutorial for Lincoln University students.
Commissioned bySue Colyer , Lincoln University Library. This page was last updated on 22/2/98.