Post on 08-May-2015
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Anatomy of a URL
by Andy Wibbels
http://andywibbels.com/
A web address has many parts.
Understanding which parts do what can help you better understand how your readers and search engines see
your site.
www.yourdomain.com
Here’s a domain name.
www.yourdomain.com
Let’s break it down into its many parts.
www.yourdomain.com
That thing on the end? That’s called a Top Level Domain.
Common top-level domains
Each country has it’sown top-level domain:
Full list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country-code_top-level_domain
www.yourdomain.com
So that’s the top-level domain, the part after the ‘dot’ and before the
‘everything else.’
www.yourdomain.com
Let’s take a look at the part‘between the dots.’
www.yourdomain.com
It doesn’t allow spaces or underscores.
www.yourdomain.comwww.YourDomain.com
www.YOURDOMAIN.com
It is not-case sensitive. All of the above go to the same place.
www.your-domain.com
You can have dashes.
www.yourdomain12.com
Or numbers.
www.yourdomain12.com
Together with the top-level domain. This is what most people mean when
they talk about ‘a domain name.’
www.your-domain12.comwww.your-domain12.netwww.your-domain12.orgwww.your-domain12.au
These are all different domain names, that might be owned by
different people.
www.your-domain.com
So that was the part ‘between the dots.’
www.your-domain.com
Let’s look at the part ‘before the dot.’
www.yourdomain.com
The part before the first dot is called the sub-domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Yes, you’re right. It doesn’t make sense that it is ‘sub’ and is first as you
read it out loud.
www.yourdomain.com
Make peace with that.
www.yourdomain.commail.yourdomain.comblog.yourdomain.comstuff.yourdomain.com
Sub-domains allow you to channel different bits of traffic to different
parts of your company.
www.yourdomain.commail.yourdomain.comblog.yourdomain.comstuff.yourdomain.com
All of these sub-domains are controlled by the same person that
owns the domain name.
www.yourdomain.com
The default is ‘www’for ‘world wide web.’
www.mail.yourdomain.com
A common mistake is adding the ‘www’ if there is already a domain
name.
www.mail.yourdomain.com
That isn’t necessary and may cause weird error messages.
yourdomain.com=
www.yourdomain.com
Depending on how a site is setup, you don’t have to type in the ‘www.’
yourdomain.com≠
www.yourdomain.com
Other times they are different.This small detail may drive you batty when troubleshooting so be vigilant.
www.yourdomain.com
So: sub-domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Top-level domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Usually referred to as one big thing called ‘a domain name.’
http://www.yourdomain.com
So what’s this H-T-T-P business?
http://www.yourdomain.com
There are many ways for you to connect to a website.
http://
The most common used by browser isHypertextTransferProtocol
http://
Hypertext is a nerdy way of saying ‘web site stuff.’
http://
The http:// tells the web server how to respond to the request to view a
particular web page or file.
http://
The colon and 2 forward slashes just make it look fancy.
http://
Yes, the direction of the slashes matters.If they lean to the right – into the direction you’re reading, they are forward slashes.
If they lean to the left – they are backslashes.
http://www.yourdomain.com
Another piece of the puzzle!
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff
Uh-oh. What’s this?
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff
This tells the website, I want to see your folder of stuff.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stu_ffhttp://www.yourdomain.com/1 23http://www.yourdomain.com/FuN
This folder on the webserver can be case sensitive and can contain spaces and underscores. It is separate from the
domain name system.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff
This part points us to the server. This part tells us what to get once we’re there.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff/something/important.pdf
The path to these files can be as long as it needs to be.
This part points us to the server. This part tells us what to get once we’re there.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff.xls
This tells the website, I want to see a spreadsheet called stuff.xls.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff.htm
This tells the website, I want to see a webpage called stuff.htm.
http://www.yourdomain.com/stuff
If there is no file requested – just the folder – the server may respond with
the ‘index’ of that folder.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505504719
Sometimes a URL has variables in it that tell the site what to do. Here is the full URL to my Facebook profile.
The browser talks to Facebook and asks for the profile.php file
the profile.php file is a script and looks for a variable called ‘id’ and that is how it knows what Facebook profile to show.
But at the end of the day, the important thing to remember is this:
www.yourdomain.com
Sub-domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Top-level domain.
www.yourdomain.com
Usually referred to as one big thing called ‘a domain name.’
Thanks!Let’s connect:
http://andywibbels.com/