URL
The URL (acronym for Uniform Resource Locator) is an alphanumeric sequence that allows all content on the Internet, such as images, videos, text, pages and websites, to be uniquely identified. It can often also be described as a web address.
Each user can view the URL of an Internet resource in the address bar, located above the web page they are visiting. The “Glossary” section of Young Platform, for instance, will have the URL “https://youngplatform.com/glossary/”.
Although they may have some similarities, it is important not to confuse domain names with URLs. The former translates the IP address of an online resource into an easily memorable and understandable name, while the URL describes the path the browser will have to take to find a specific item on the web.
Each URL incorporates within it a number of elements that provide detailed information about the associated web resource. The most relevant components, proceeding from left to right, include:
- The network protocol used by the browser to request a given resource. In a nutshell, this is the set of rules that allows two machines to exchange information and which dictates the rules for proper communication. The two most commonly used protocols are HTTP and HTTPS, but this string can often be omitted (assigning the default HTTP protocol). In the example cited earlier, the protocol is ‘https://’;
- The internet domain, i.e. the text string consisting of domain name, top-level domain (or TLD) and subdomain. In our case, the domain name is “youngplatform“, the top-level domain “.com” and the sub-domain “www.” (not specified and therefore allocated by default);
- The path (also called slug), which is the sequence beginning with ‘/’ and immediately following the top-level domain. This component is used to direct the browser to a defined resource within the website. In our example, the path is associated with ‘/glossary‘.
