Internet Help
Internet Help The World Wide Web is a network of server computers that stay on line 24-hours a day. You might remember from the last newsletter that 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 take a look at some URL addresses:
http://www.disney.com http://www.nasa.gov http://www.thepoint.net
http://www.4-h.org http://www.army.mil http://www.ius.edu
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. |
| com/ gov/
net/ org/ mil/ edu/ |
These tell what type of computer the web page is on. Commercial is com/. These are owned and operated by commercial ventures. Departments of Government are gov/. Network or net/ are machines that provide internet service to individuals or companies. Non-profit organizations are org/. Military computers are mil/. Educational computers like universities are edu/. Recently I read the Department of Internet, a privately run government office, has added med/. These are for medical organizations. The / tells you that is the end of the server's address. |
| http://www.thepoint.net/ | 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. |
| ~stbar/ | When you see ~ and what follows, it tells the name of the person who has a web page on this server. The forward slash / signifies the end of the name. By typing the address to this forward slash, you can see the opening page of the web site. |
| research/ | When you see a word by itself like this and no html after it, then it means this is folder. Web designers use these folders to organize their web pages. |
| related.html | This is the name of a web page. Dot, the period key, is the space. Html is the type of file this is. Html stands for hypertext mark-up language. |
Deborah A. Schweitzer