I don't mean to sound ignorant, but what does URL stand for? Is it the same thing as an actual web site?

Question

I have an evaluation sheet in class that ask URL of website. I was just wondering what exactly does this mean?

Answer 1

A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator and usually has 3 parts, the protocol, the domain/target, and the requested file. For example, to search google you type http://www.google.com/

The protocol is the stuff before the the word before the ://, in this case, and in the case of almost every web page, it's 'http'. This stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, Hyper Text being web pages and Transfer Protocol meaning a standard system to send the information. The protocol is like a header put on memos, no matter what's being sent, all similar memos have the same header.

The Target or Domain is the IP address (like a phone number) or domain name (like the name to go with a phone number) of the server you want to contact. For google it has a domain name of google.com. A DNS server holds the IP addresses for every domain name registered (much like a phone book holds phone numbers for every registered person). The DNS server sends back the IP address so you can get to it directly.

Once your computer has the IP address it sends the request to it. For http://www.google.com/ the request is only for the home page, but if you typed http://www.google.com/images or http://images.google.com/ the request would be for images, and the Google server reads the request and knows to return the image search page.

So to answer your question no a URL is not a web site. Returning to my analagy, The URL is like the data needed to call someone on the phone (family name/domain name; phone number/IP address; and your question and who it's for/request) Then once you "call" them using that URL, whoever you called sends back the data you requested

Hope this helps

Answer 2

URL=User Relay Link

HTTP=Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

HTML=Hyper Text Mark-up Language

Answer 3

Universal Resource Locator (well I not sure last word)

URL is not same as a website, URL is like a path directory string for Internet, for the record, Internet is not limited to a large collection of websites and neither is it limited to using a Web browser to view them.

Answer 4

Uniform Resource Locator. It's not neccessarily the samething as the actual web site, it's just a means of locating it.

Answer 5

URL=Universal Resource Locator

It is the language equivalent of an IP address.

URL's are translated by DNS (Dynamic Name Servers)
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DNS.html
from language into IP addresses.

Have fun but be safe.

I have seen the light of 1000 stars,
but none so bright as the light within!

Answer 6

Uniform Resource Locator

Answer 7

The previous answer said its name. URL's are supposed to be a simplification of the IP address for us common users.

The IP address is a series of numbers simular to this: 192.168.21.102. Each computer has a different IP address, so you can see that it would be very difficult for you or me to remember or log the IP addresses of every site we visit or email we send etc. The URL allows us to use a name which is much easier for us to remember.

Answer 8

all i know is you need a url for a website.so it must mean the same as web address.just a guess.

Answer 9

Uniform Resource Locator, I think -- it's the web address you see when you're viewing the page, such as http://answers.yahoo.com/question/

Answer 10

John Fogerty. How could you put Chad Kroeger or Nickelback in the same sentence as CCR?