Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians

by Eric H. Schnell

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

   Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs, are used to specify the location of an Internet resource.  URLs inform the browser of the type of access protocol to be used, the Internet domain address of the server, and the filepath/filename of the resource. URLs are, by their nature, absolute pathnames. The standard syntax of a URL is:

protocoltype://host.domain(:port)/directory(/subdirectory)/filename.extension

       or for this page:

http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/primer/url.html

   The protocols, or type of server, that are supported in the protocoltype section of the URL syntax include:

  • ftp: an anonymous ftp server 
  • gopher: a gopher server
  • http: a Web server
  • news: a news server
  • telnet: a Telnet-based server
  • mailto: to send electronic mail message

   This hypertext reference / URL combination creates a link to this Primer:

<A HREF ="http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/primer/webdocs.html"> Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians</A>

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Page Updated: February 8, 2005