How does url work

How do short URLs services work? Ask Question. Asked 12 years ago. Active 5 years ago. Viewed 70k times. Improve this question. Abel Nathan Campos Nathan Campos Is this what you are asking? Do the shortened urls ever get expired? They may also allow for never-expiry, some ask a membership for that. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Jawwad 1, 2 2 gold badges 9 9 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Abel Abel Actually I think, Bit. Since bit.

No need to remember the bit. This turns it into a Moved not Moved Permanently. This is a subtle difference. By adding the timestamp, the browser considers it should check whether the resource is changed or not when this timeout it reached.

Others, like is. In your browser's address bar, a URL doesn't have any context, so you must provide a full or absolute URL, like the ones we saw above.

You don't need to include the protocol the browser uses HTTP by default or the port which is only required when the targeted Web server is using some unusual port , but all the other parts of the URL are necessary. Because the browser already has the document's own URL, it can use this information to fill in the missing parts of any URL available inside that document. In this case, the browser will call that URL with the same protocol as the one used to load the document hosting that URL.

The browser will use the same protocol and the same domain name as the one used to load the document hosting that URL. Note: it isn't possible to omit the domain name without omitting the protocol as well. In this case, we use the.. Despite their very technical flavor, URLs represent a human-readable entry point for a Web site. They can be memorized, and anyone can enter them into a browser's address bar.

People are at the core of the Web, and so it is considered best practice to build what is called semantic URLs. Semantic URLs use words with inherent meaning that can be understood by anyone, regardless of their technical know-how. Linguistic semantics are of course irrelevant to computers. You've probably often seen URLs that look like mashups of random characters. Your web browser finds web pages using an IP , or Internet Protocol.

The IP is a series of numbers, which look something like: Imagine if you had to remember a number like that for every website that you wanted to visit. The internet would not have become so popular if that were the case! Furthermore, not every site has a static , or permanent, IP.

Some IPs change on a regular basis, which would make it nearly impossible to go directly to the websites you want to visit. So instead of trying to memorize IPs, we use URLs, which generally stay the same and make sense to our brains.

The browser can then use the IP number to bring you to your desired destination. A URL usually looks something like this:. To compare it with the breakdown above, this URL:. If you want, you can click the link above to be brought to that page and see for yourself how it works. A link is a clickable snippet of text associated with a URL. Clicking on the link brings you to the page the URL points to. This saves you time, letting you easily explore associated web pages without having to copy and paste URLs into your browser.

In most browsers, if you hover over a link, holding your mouse over it without clicking it, you can see the associated URL at the bottom of the browser window.

It's a good idea to do this before clicking on any link, so you know where that click brings you. When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. So does this e-mail address: example howstuffworks. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's DNS servers to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address.

Top-level domain names, also called first-level domain names, include. EDU and. Within every top-level domain there is a huge list of second-level domains.

For example, in the.