Posting links to websites, etc.

[Mark Hennessy]

The problem is that you're using a semi-colon, not a colon. It should be:

Code:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Not:

Code:

http;//www.bbc.co.uk/

This gave me a sense of deja-vu - http://golbornevintageradio.co.uk/forum/...p?tid=5073  

Now, it can be hard to tell the difference between the two, especially with some fonts, so it might be worth "zooming" your display if in doubt.

Basically, the "http" means "hyper-text transfer protocol". It tells the browser what to expect. You might have seen "ftp" instead of "http" occasionally - there are others...

The colon separates that from the parameter - the address itself. The two forward slashes say something like "this is an absolute address", and then the address itself follows. Of course, the address is turned into numbers by a protocol called DNS, so the computer actually goes here:

Code:

http://212.58.246.55/

Though numbers often change, so that might stop working in the future.

As to the "www" bit...

Essentially, that's just convention - the first part can be anything you like, but it makes sense to use "www" because that's what everyone else uses. But there are plenty of exceptions. A lot of websites actually work fine if you omit the "www". Others don't work if you do include it. For a full explanation, you'd have to read up about how DNS works - which is OK at first, but quickly because a bit of beast

For completeness, it's worth saying that everything after the domain name refers to resources on that machine. For example:

Code:

http://markhennessy.uk/audax/construction.htm

Here, "audax" is a directory on my web server, and "construction.htm" is a file within that directory.

Note that omitting the "www" works here, and there is no ".co" because I've paid to register "markhennessy.uk" in addition to "markhennessy.co.uk". For what that's worth...

Often a web address ends with a slash:

Code:

http://markhennessy.uk/guestbook/sign/

Here, a path is given, but no file is specified. So what happens is the web server looks in the "guestbook/sign" directory for "index.htm", "index.html", "index.php" - and no-doubt others as well. An error message - or a directory listing - might be returned if no suitable file is found.

This means I can give out addresses that look less messy - no fiddly .htm at the end. Eventually, I'll move all pages on my site to this format. It just means creating lots of directories with index.htm in them, rather than fewer directories with multiple .htm files within. This approach is also more "search-engine friendly", apparently. For what that's worth...

BTW, my guestbook is looking a bit thin these days - please feel free to sign it

All the best,

Mark