How to Enter an Address and Go to a Website

Enter the web address in the address bar. The web address is also known as URL: stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Among the vast and interconnected Internet, a URL is a reference to a particular web page or “resource”. The URL has two main parts, the protocol identifier and the resource name, which are separated by a colon and two slashes. ^[1]

• Protocol identifier: this first part of the URL represents the type of protocol used. For example, the URL http://example.com has the protocol identifier http .
• Resource name: this is the second part of the URL, this represents the IP address or domain name to which the resource belongs. For example, in the URL http://example.com, the source name is example.com .

Don’t bother entering the protocol name unless you want to access an encrypted website. It is not necessary to enter the protocol part (unless you want to use a different protocol than the default). http:// is the default protocol for most websites, but those used for logins or forms will use the https:// protocol. Thus, the new information is encrypted and not intercepted.

• There are some browsers that will replace the protocol in the URL with a padlock icon. This icon indicates that this is a secure https:// site. You need to pay attention to the warnings that the browser gives about the security certificate of the website.
• In the early days of the Internet, users had to enter a protocol identifier every time they wanted to visit certain websites. Today, this operation is no longer necessary.

Enter the subdomain www. www is actually just a subdomain of web pages and not part of the URL. However, there are some websites that use other subdomains, such as video.google.com. You need to check that you don’t miss the dependent domain of the URL.

Enter the domain name. In the example of the article, example.com is the domain name, followed by the second level domain .com . This is the most basic thing you need to go to a website. Make sure you enter each character correctly and use the correct second level domain name.

• Some second-level domains represent specific locations or sectors. For example, .ca is a second-level domain reserved for websites in Canada, a .gov domain is reserved for government websites, and so on.
• If you are accessing a domain name but the website is not showing up, chances are that the domain name was entered incorrectly. Double check your spelling and make sure you are typing it correctly. If the web page still doesn’t show up, the content may no longer exist.

Enter the file path to go to the specific web page on the website. If you want to go directly to a web page that belongs to a website, you need to enter the file path. The file path is always followed by a “/”. The “/” in the URL represents a subdirectory of a website. Each “/” indicates that you are going one level deeper into the site. The path is followed by the filename, sometimes with an extension (for example, “example.com/subdirectory/filename.html”).

• Most URLs do not require a file extension as they are usually auto-populated. However, this part is also quite important, so you need to check to make sure that the file path is entered correctly. For example, /page.php and /page.html are completely separate files.

Use your computer’s Copy feature if possible. To prevent errors when manually entering long strings of characters in the address bar, you can perform a copy and paste operation.