Ever wonder what a URL is or how to read it?  Well eyetweaks wants to help.

URL = Uniform Resource Locator

Look at the following link url it will be our example:

http://www.eyetweaks.com/HowTo/urlanatomy/anatomyurl.htm

This is the page you are looking at now.

Now lets break it down into the different parts or sections:

http://

The URL begins with this http:// it stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

This tells the web browser to transfer the file as Hypertext which is the standard language of the web.  

URLs can also begin with other acronyms specifying alternative protocols such as:

• gopher://  "which specifies the gopher protocol"
• ftp://        "which stands for File Transfer Protocol typically used to transfer large programs or files"
• telnet://    "begins a telnet session with the remote host"

Next part of the URL:

http://www.eyetweaks.com

This will identify the server to access with the protocol that is the first part of the URL.  In other words you access the site or machine called www.eyetweaks.com via hypertext transfer protocol or HTP

 Next part of the URL:

http://www.eyetweaks.com/HowTo/urlanatomy/anatomyurl.htm

or just the HowTo/urlanatomy/anatomyurl.htm part of it.

This section or the URL tells the browser where to look on the server www.eyetweaks.com for a file called anatomyurl.htm in a directory or folder called HowTo inside a folder called urlanatomy.

Rules to remember when you are naming files:

1. Upper / Lower Case sensitivity counts in the names of files, folders and directorys.  Since most websites are hosted on UNIX machines its a good rule of thumb to remember when setting up your links and names "URL Names are Case Sensitive".
2. do not put spaces into your names of files, folders or directories.  I think this works for Mac users but not anyone else.
3. Use valid extension for your file names.  If your file name is urlanatomy.htm or html as some prefer.  
   *examples of extensions you might see or use.
   1.   .jpg  JPEG files which is a graphics format for images.
   2.   .gif   GIF is also a graphics format for images 
   3.   .bmp BMP is also a graphics format
   4.   .htm or html is a web page format 
   5.   .au is a sound format
   6.   .qt or .mov is for movies
   *and the list goes on.
4. When using one of these or other file extensions for a file you must insure the format matches the assigned extention. That is the graphics files for example have been saved as the extension you are trying to use.  Calling up a file called urlanatomy.htm  as urlanatomy.jpg will not work.

So our URL broken apart would look like this url.  
           
            protocol://host.domain:port/directory/filename

protocol:// assigns the protocol to use.  can also be http://, gopher://, ftp:// and telnet://.

host.domain is the host were we are accessing the assigned protocol in our example we used www.eyetweaks.com which is EyeTweaks web server address.

:port will assign the port to access on the server, the defualt ports are 80 for http://, 70 for gopher://, 21 for ftp:// and 23 for telnet://.  

/directory is the path to the file or directory that you wanted to access.

/filename would be the actual file you are trying to access or view.  example is anatomyurl.htm.