URL: Difference between revisions
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== History == | == History == | ||
The URL was first created in 1994<ref name="www">[http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.txt w3.org]URL specifications</ref> by [[Tim Berners-Lee]] and the [[IETF|Internet Engineering Task Force]]'s URI Working Group.<ref name="ietf">[http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt ietf.org]RFC 1738</ref> | |||
The URL was first created in | |||
Berners-Lee originally designed the URL to have the domain name separated by dots, but later regretted it, wishing he had designed the URL to be separated by slashed throughout, as in: <big><code>http:com/sample/www/path/to/name</code></big> instead of <big><code><nowiki>http://www.sample.com/path/to/name</nowiki></code></big>. <ref>[http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ#etc w3.org] World Wide Web </ref> Twenty years after creating the URL, Tim Berners-Lee, in an interview with Times, went so far as to apologize for using the two forward slashes (//) following the colon separator.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8306631.stm news.bbc.co.uk]</ref> | |||
== Types of URL == | == Types of URL == | ||
Revision as of 07:29, 3 May 2011
URL is an abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. It was previously known as the Universal Resource Locator and is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier. The URL is a unique address or file path that represents the location of a file on the internet and also specifies the method to retrieve the resource from the location. URL is often confused with URI, which is a unique identifier of a resource on the internet. A URL is a type of URI like a URN (Uniform Resource Name) which is a unique name of a resource.
Every website on the internet has a unique URL, which can be entered into the address bar of a web browser to access and view it. Any other file or resource such as an image file, web (HTML) page other than the home page, Java applet and even a programs imbedded inside a site, such as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application, can also be accessed using a URL.
The URL consists of a protocol that tells the web browser how to retrieve the file or a resource; a domain name which identifies a specific computer on the Internet; and a pathname, a hierarchical description, which specifies the location of the particular file on the computer. A computer referred here can also be called a web server which stores web pages and files associated with them and provide them to clients (web browsers) when a request is made in the form of accessing a URL.
Syntax[edit | edit source]
A typical URL is set up in the following way:
http://www.abcd.org/def/def1234.txt
The first part of the URL, in this case http, is the specified scheme. The HTTP (Hyptertest Transfer Protocol) scheme is used to transfer HTML pages on the web. Other protocols are ftp, gopher, mailto, and wais, which are all used for their own purpose. The scheme is separated from the rest of the URL by a colon; the rest of URL follows the colon in a format specific to the scheme.
The second part of the URL, in this case www.abcd.com, specifies a unique computer name. This name is a hierarchy of domains, descending from right to left and separated by a dot. The rightmost domain, or label, is the TLD.
Following the TLD, separated by backslash, is the location or pathname of a resource (in this example, a text file named def1234.txt), to be accessed on the computer.[1][2][3]
History[edit | edit source]
The URL was first created in 1994[3] by Tim Berners-Lee and the Internet Engineering Task Force's URI Working Group.[2]
Berners-Lee originally designed the URL to have the domain name separated by dots, but later regretted it, wishing he had designed the URL to be separated by slashed throughout, as in: http:com/sample/www/path/to/name instead of http://www.sample.com/path/to/name. [4] Twenty years after creating the URL, Tim Berners-Lee, in an interview with Times, went so far as to apologize for using the two forward slashes (//) following the colon separator.[5]
Types of URL[edit | edit source]
URL is basically of two types, Absolute and Relative. The Absolute URL is a URL, which is independent of other elements and points directly to the exact file location For instance,"mywebsite.com/images/homepage.jpg" is an absolute URL, which specifies that the image file homepage.jpg is located in the images directory, under the mywebsite domain.
A Relative URL is a type of URL, which is depended on other elements and point to a directory or file in relation to the present directory or file. A good example of this type of URL would be "../image/homepage.jpg". In this, the first two periods (..) direct the server to move up one directory (the root directory), then enter images directory and then point to the homepage.jpg file. The main benefit of Relative URL is it helps the web masters to make changes in the directory as and when they want without rewriting the entire path again and again. [6]
SEO benefits[edit | edit source]
There is a latest trend in the search engines, which says that URLs when shortened can really play a major role in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of a web site. Many SEO experts advice that a URL of the form: www.yourwebsite.com/category/subcategory leads to better search engine rankings. [7]. Google, a leading search engine has also developed URL shortener, which helps to convert longer URLs into short ones. This has been created in the view that, with shorter URLs people can easily share the links of their web site on the popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and in turn can get huge back-links and increase traffic to their web site. [8]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ searchnetwork.techtarget.comDefinition URL
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 ietf.orgRFC 1738
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 w3.orgURL specifications
- ↑ w3.org World Wide Web
- ↑ news.bbc.co.uk
- ↑ blog.webhosting.uk.com
- ↑ webmasters.stackexchange.com
- ↑ htmlgoodies.comSEO benefits of Google URL shortner