Internet Help

Internet Help

By Deborah Schweitzer

WWW and URL

The World Wide Web is a network of server computers that stay on line 24-hours a day. A server is a powerful computer that is attached directly to the web all of the time. These servers can offer email service or can store web pages that we can access. Every web page on the Internet has a unique address or URL.

To understand how a single page is kept unique in a world of electronic pages, you need to understand or recognize its URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator. Every page has a unique URL. Like the address on your house, every single web page has a unique address or URL. This web address or URL is in the location line or net site line at the top of your browsers. If you want, you can type in an address to go directly to a page or click on a link to take you to another web page.

Let's break down each section of these URLs. All addresses are usually all lower case, but sometimes upper case letters are used and when they are used, you must use them.

http://

This tells how the information is transferred from the server computer to your computer. Http stands for hypertext transfer protocol. This means the information is moved with HTML or Hypertext Mark Language. In the early 1990's they discovered this language lets you not only transfer text but also pictures and sounds. Because most web pages are hypertext, you no longer need to type this part of the address.

www.	These letters stand for the world wide web. Since there are no spaces used on the Internet, the period key is used to show a separation or space. These periods are called dots.

disney. nasa.

thepoint. 4-h.

army. ius.

This tells the name of the server computer. Most of these are in all lowercase letters and two words like the point are run together. The dot at the end signals the end of the name of the server computer.

edu/ -Colleges and Universities

org/ - Non-profit organizations com/ -Commercial or Companies

gov/ - Federal government

mil/ - Military

net/ - Network – old systems that were setup to give a group of people access to the internet.

These tell what type of computer the web page is on

http://www.ius.edu, http://www.indiana.edu

http://www.louisville.edu

Can two servers have the same name?

http://www.rainforest.org

http://www.rainforest.com

http://www.whitehouse.gov

Now let's look at a little longer web address.

http://www.ius.edu/dschwei2

http://www.ius.edu/	This tells the name of the server computer. Always look for the forward slash /. This means this is the end of the name of the server computer. You can enter just that much to see the server's home page.
dschwei2	When you see a forward slash (/) This signifies you are going into a folder on that server. By typing the address to this forward slash, you can see the opening page of the website of the host computer.

Let’s Look at international addressing by looking at state homepages:

http://www.state.(2 letter state abbreviations).us

server

2 lower case state abbreviations

country

Here are some examples:

http://www.state.in.us/	http://www.state.ky.us /
http://www.state.oh.us/	http://www.state.tn.us/

Check out these address to see s

state and country abbreviations:

http://www.truckstop.com/Help/CountryAbbrev.html

http://www.boxco.com/stateabs.html

County home pages may be http://www.co.servername.in.us

http://www.co.clark.in.us, http://www.co.orange.in.us/

Public School Systems: http://www.servername.k12.in.us

http:// www.nafcs.k12.in.us, http://www.shcsc.k12.in.us, http://www.jefferson.k12.ky.us