URL: Definition

A URL stands for Uniform (or Universal) Resource Locator, which is another word for a web address. Web addresses can be composed of words (eg: w3schools.com), or an Internet Protocol (IP) address (eg: 192.68.20.50). Most people enter the name when surfing, because names are easier to remember than numbers. Web browsers request pages from web servers, by using the URL. When you click on a link, an underlying <a> tag, which contains the URL, points to an address on the web.

URLs follow these syntax rules:

• scheme - defines the type of Internet service (most common is http)
• host - defines the domain host (default host for http is www)
• domain - defines the Internet domain name (in this case: w3schools.com)
• port - defines the port number at the host (default for http is 80 and usually is not shown in the URL)
• path - defines a path at the server (If omitted, then the path is the root directory of the website)
• filename - defines the name of a document or resource

When I first got into HTML, I used URL as an acronym for "User Really Lost."