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Don't Make My
Mistakes!
What Is Web
Hosting
The URL & How It Works
Storage &
Transfer Explained
How to Choose a Hosting Plan
General Considerations
Linux vs Windows Hosting
Starting an Online Business
Getting Started: Keyword Research
Choosing Your Domain Name
Purchasing a Domain Name
Who Owns Your Domain Name?
Building Your Web Site
Track Your Website Traffic
Free
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The URL
and How It Works
By Vernon Sandel
We blithely type in the URL's of the web
sites we want to visit without a thought of what they are or how they
work. What's in a URL? The URL or Uniform Resource
Locater is defined by the Wikipedia as "a Uniform Resource Indicator (LRI)
that in addition to identifying a resource, provides a means of locating
the resource by describing its primary access mechanism (e.g., its
network 'location')." Essentially it is the address of a web page on the
internet, although it has other meanings as well. Let's parse a URL and
show how it works using this web site as an
example. The URL is:
http://www.hostingplanscompared.com
Starting from right to left, the .com is called a top level domain
(TOD).
There are quite a number of these TODs, the most common being .com,
.net, .info, .edu and .gov. Originally the idea was to classify web
sites by type using the TOD: .com being commercial, .net referring to a
network, .info an information site, .edu for schools, and
.gov a
government site. Since .com became the most popular and most remembered TOD, sites other than commercial sites began registering
.com names, and
finally .com, .net, and .info became unrestricted TODs, open to any type
of web site. Today there are 22 generic TODs, and in addition each
country has a two letter country TOD, e.g. .us for United States and
.uk
for United Kingdom.
The "hostingplanscompared.com" part of the URL is called the
registered domain name. It is what you get when you pay a registrar to
register a domain name. Who owns the registered domain name? Technically
nobody. Domain names like real estate are
leased not purchased. You get to use the domain name only as long as you
pay your rent, but it reverts to no man's land if you do not renew the
registration before it deletes. (If you think
you own your property, consider what happens if you don't pay your lease
fees called property
taxes. Government lets you use your property only as
long as you pay your taxes. They also tell you what you can
build, how to build it, where to build, etc. You lease your
property from government.)
The domain name of this web site is "www.hostingplanscompared.com".
To complete the URL the hypertext transfer protocol (http://)
has to be added. This is an exchange of data between the web server
containing my web site and the internet service provider (ISP) of the
computer asking for the web site. In simple terms it works like this:
When the ISP computer gets the request for a
web page from the browser of a client computer, it checks the domain
name in a data base (much like an online phone book), and finds the IP
address (a numerical address) of the web hosting server which has the
web page on it. The ISP computer initiates a contact with that
server (http protocol) asking for all the elements (content, pictures,
etc.) of the requested web page. - The web site hosting computer sends the requested information to
the ISP computer which is then relayed to the requesting computer.
- The requesting computer's browser interprets the data and
constructs the web page on the monitor screen.
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