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The homepage
Your homepage (or the "index" page, as it is sometimes called) should be named "index.html" or "index.htm".
To learn more about the index.html page, visit the following websites:
Uniform Resource Locator
Webopedia defines a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web." When you visit a web page, the page's URL (its web address) is shown in your web browser's address bar. Every page on the World Wide Web has its own unique web address (URL). Examples of URLs are http://www.google.com and http://espn.go.com/nfl/
Components of a URL
A typical URL is made up of several components. Consider this URL from web designer Robin Williams’ website The Non-Designer's Web Book:
http://www.ratz.com/robin/hats.html
Let’s break down this URL into its component parts to see the purpose of each part.
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The http stands for hypertext transfer protocol. This part of the URL tells you the file is on the World Wide Web. |
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This stands for World Wide Web and is mainly a convention. Some sites do not even have www in their address. However, some URLs will not work without first typing the www part of the address. |
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ratz.com is the domain name. It identifies where the site is hosted. In many cases, the domain name tells you who owns the site. However, this is not always the case. If an individual or business does not purchase their own domain, they may simply pay a company to host their site. The domain name will then be the host company's name. |
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robin/hats.html (and any other parts of an address after the domain name) is just a path telling the browser where to find the page you need. For instance, in this address the browser finds ratz.com, and the slash tells it to look inside the ratz.com folder to find a folder or directory robin. Then the next slash tells it to look inside the robin folder and find the file "hats.html". |
More on URLs
To learn more about URLs and web servers, visit the following websites: