The URL of your blog or website is the web address that is used to locate it on the Internet. There are five components to a URL: scheme, sub-domain, top-level domain, second-level domain, and subdirectory.
In the world of the internet, the URL is one of the most basic technologies. Users of the Internet use URLs to access resources through a browser on a daily basis, and these URLs are not limited to addressing websites.
If you’re unaware of this and want to learn about it, this article is for you. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the structure of a URL and focus on its key applications.
What is a URL?
Whenever your website is located, you will see a uniform resource locator (URL) at the top of the screen. This text string can be used to link a web page or another resource (for example, a program or a graphic document). You can always see the URL of the currently opened page in your browser’s address bar while surfing the web.
Moreover, the identifiers of the URLs enable you to locate resources locally and globally on the Internet using a unique identifier. It is sometimes incorrect to refer to URLs as “Internet addresses” instead of “Identifier” subspecies.
The reason for this is that URLs are primarily used to address web pages. However, URLs do not have to be used in this manner. For example, files in the local file system can be localized by using URLs. Therefore, every internet address is a URL, but not every URL is an internet address.
In many cases, the owner of the website doesn’t want to show its website’s URL, and they encode their website’s URL, and you want to decode the URL and read the slug; you must need to use https://url-decode.com/ site’s URL decoder tool. We recommend you use this decoding tool because of its user-friendly interface and ease of use.
URL Syntax:
In every URL, there is a formula and a formula-specific part:
- Formula: The URL formula specifies both the type of resource and the method by which it can be accessed. In many cases, the URL is the same name as the protocol used by the accessor in the application. In general, formulae such as mailto, file, ftp, or http/https are used
- Formula-specific part: Depending on the type of formula, the formula-specific part of the URL may contain a number of segments that contain the resource’s location as well as possible processing parameters.
In formulas, the formula-specific part is separated by a colon. It may also be necessary to use two slashes, which were commonly used in the early days of the internet, but no longer serve any particular purpose.
According to the URI-syntax, a URL is composed of the following elements:
Scheme: [ // [ user [ : password ] @ ] host [ : port ] ] [ / path ] [ ? query ] [ # fragment ]
It is important to note that each segment of the formula-specific part serves a specific purpose. The “Authorities” section contains sections for users, passwords, hosts, and ports. A resource’s authority indicates which computer it can be found on and what name it has been assigned.
Characters in a URL
As part of the URL standard, only a limited character set of American Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters is supported. Furthermore, various characters already serve some functions, such as identifying segments of a URL and allowing it to be decomposed and processed.
According to the URL standard, the following characters have already been assigned a specific function:
( ) * + , ; = : / ? # [ ] @ $ & ‘
As an example, the question mark (?) initiates a query string. The query string contains a number of parameters that are separated by an ampersand (&). The equal sign (=) is used to separate the parameter name from its value. Jump labels are initiated by the hash (#).
All letters and digits as well as the following special characters are considered undefined characters:
- A-Z, a-z
- 0-9
- – . _ ~
Aside from the ASCII characters listed here, non-ASCII characters may now be used in URLs and must be rewritten. You can also rewrite one of the reserved characters so that it will not be interpreted as its predefined meaning.
In order to convert ASCII characters, the URL standard uses the masking character % (percent) and the ASCII value table in hexadecimal notation. Also, characters that are not ASCII will be rewritten using a percent representation. According to RFC 3986, UTF-8 encoding is recommended for ASCII compatibility. However, this recommendation is not binding on the service providers, and the decision to use a particular encoding is ultimately theirs.
Conclusion
In summary, a website URL consists of three basic elements:
- Protocol – HTTP or HTTPS
- Domain name (including TLD) identifies a website
- Paths that lead to specific web pages
We hope this article is helpful for you and you have cleared almost all the queries related to the URL.
