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Chapter 2: What's a URL?
URL stands for uniform resource locator. This is just a fancy name for a Web address such as www.coffeecup.com. Sometimes you'll see URLs written with http:// at the beginning. This is not part of the URL but is used to specify the protocol or data transfer method that the browser will use. All Web pages use some variant of HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol.
A URL identifies the location of a resource (a file) on the internet. There are at least two parts to this: the name of the Web server where the file is located, and the name of the file. Sometimes a third part is added as well, identifying the folder on the server where the file is located. Let's look at some examples.
www.coffeecup.com is a URL that identifies a specific Web server but
without a file name. If someone navigates to this URL they will get a file-
-a Web page--because the server is programmed to return the default page
in this situation. Essentially all Websites have a default page and it is
often named "index.html".
www.coffeecup.com/images/logo.jpg is a URL that includes a folder and a file name. It specifies the file logo.jpg in the folder images on the Web server.
