Every website you’ve ever visited has at least three of the nine parts of a URL. Every Google search generates a URL. The parts of a URL can often be confusing. In this blog post, I’ll explain what the components of a URL are. It’s therefore helpful to know more about the anatomy of a URL, especially since they not only determine where your site is located but also provide details about the pages on your website.
- What is a URL?
- The protocol
- The subdomain
- The domain name
- The top-level domain name
- The Gate
- The Path
- The query
- The parameters
- The excerpt
What is a URL?
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is another term for a website’s address or the location of the resource. It not only indicates the location of the resource (page, video, file, etc.) online, but also provides information about the request being made, the page number, or even the architecture of a website.
A simple web address has at least three parts (such as https://xxlhosting.nl) or up to nine parts in the case of a complex URL. The nine components of a URL are the protocol, the subdomain, the domain name, the top-level domain name, the port, the path, the query, the parameters, and the fragment.
The protocol
The protocol, also known as the scheme, is the first part of the URL. It represents the set of rules that determine how files are displayed, formatted, or transferred over the Internet. For example, when an address is entered into the browser, the “http” part—which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTML)—indicates that the page should be displayed to the visitor in HTML. Other protocols include the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for transferring files and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which is used by mail servers to send emails. Did you know that HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP?
Example result: https://
The subdomain
The subdomain. The most common subdomain is ‘www,’ a general symbol for any resource on the Internet. However, it is common to specify the type of resource that the browser should retrieve. In the case of the URL below, we can see that the type of data requested from the server is for videos.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl
The domain name
The domain name is the actual name of the website. In the case of the URL below, we can see that ‘xxlhosting’ is the domain name. Domain names must be unique because they literally determine a website’s address. In the early days of the internet, you actually had to type the IP address to visit a specific site. Later, words were used instead because they were easier to remember.
Domain names must be unique because they literally determine a website's address. In the early days of the internet, you actually had to type in the IP address to visit a specific site. Later, words were used instead because they were easier to remember.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl
The top-level domain name
The top-level domain (TLD) is also known as the domain extension. It is the ‘.nl’ that appears at the end of a simple website address. This part specifies what kind of content will be featured on the website. ‘.com’ was primarily used for commercial sites (although it’s now used to refer to any website), while ‘.org’ is usually used to indicate that the website belongs to an organization. When it comes to buying a domain, the domain extension can determine how much it costs. For example, ’.vegas’ is often more expensive than ‘.com’ or ‘.net.’ In the example below, ‘.nl’ is the top-level domain name.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl
The Gate
A port is a reserved channel used for specific purposes. Different types of servers use different ports. For example, web server ports differ from file server ports. The default port for standard HTTP servers is 80, and secure websites use HTTPS, which requires port 443. Browsers must connect to a specific port to access the resources on that server.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl:80
The Path
The path used to indicate the directory on the server where the requested resources (files, videos, audio, etc.) are stored. Nowadays, the path displayed in most URLs does not necessarily reflect the directory structure on the server. Instead, paths are used to identify a route within the website’s navigation structure. For example, if you’re editing a ‘Medium’ page, the path structure is https://medium.com/p/some_number/edit. The term ‘edit’ in the URL indicates that this is the page where you edit your blog posts. In the URL above, the path relates to playing a video, hence ‘videoplay’ in the example below.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl:80/video play
The query
The query. When you search on a website or search engine, you’ll often see a question mark in the URL of the page where the results are displayed. If you search for a keyword on google.com, you’ll see ‘/search?’ added after ‘.com.’ The question mark tells the browser that a query is being executed on a database where the data is stored.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl:80/videoplay?
The parameters
The parameters are the actual values that are retrieved when a search is performed. Parameters can be a search term, a number, an encoded value, or other data that can be found in the database. Copy and paste the following URL into your browser's address bar to view shoes: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=shoes
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl:80/videoplay?docid=-7234293487129834&hl=en
The excerpt
Finally, the fragment is an optional part of a web address that is preceded by a hash and refers to secondary resources, which may be part of a page, such as a footer or sidebar. Often, the fragment is the id attribute of an HTML element.
Example result: https://video.xxlhosting.nl:80/videoplay?docid=-7234293487129834&hl=en#00h02m30s
