URL Story
Let’s follow the story of a URL. It is surprising what it can tell us about the digital networks we use.
What does URL stand for?
- Uniform
- Resource
- Locator
What does URL mean? Think about each word.
- Uniform (adjective)
- Describes something that always has the same appearance. This is also the idea of a school or military uniform (noun).
- uni one, form shape or look.
- Resource (noun)
- Something that we can use: text, media, etc.
- Locator (noun)
- A description of where to look for something. A URL shows where to look on the World Wide Web.
- The word comes from the parts of a book index. The locator is the part that tells you the page(s) on which your word can be found.
Because a URL is the location of a resource, it is also called the address of that resource.
An Example
Let’s think about this URL.
https://norton-pri.n-yorks.sch.uk
What is the resource?
Our school website!
What is the domain?
- n-yorks.sch.uk
- The domain of all North Yorkshire’s schools.
norton-priis the subdomain relating to our school.
What is the protocol?
- https
- Hypertext Transport Protocol Secure
- This is the protocol (set of rules) that computers and servers follow to share and link resources.
- The secure part shows that messages between your device and the server are encrypted so that a hacker can’t read them.
Compare our school website URL to the one for this page:
https://computing.norton-pri.n-yorks.sch.uk/year-6/networks/url-story/
Even things that appear on web pages have their own URLs. This kitten photo is located on the school website. It is in a folder called images.
How many different ways can you display it on your screen?
To Do
Complete your mind map about the `Uniform Resource Locator'.
- Add what you already know about URLs.
- Add other information you found out today.
- Add colour!
- Add pictures!