http:// --- This indicates it's a web page address. It is quite common to leave this part off. In modern browsers, the http:// will automatically get prefixed to addresses you type in.
www.domainname.com --- This part is called the 'host name'. It indicates what computer the page resides on. A .com address is usually an American site (though not always), while a .nz address is a New Zealand site.
/path/to/ --- This part specifies the 'path' to the actual page you want to look at. Each '/' separates the name of the directories (or folders).
file.html--- This is the actual name of the file, or page you are looking at. Most pages have a suffix of .html or .htm. Other suffices could be .cgi, .asp, .gif, .jpg. Sometimes you'll find that there is no file name at all, and the url ends with a '/'. This means that the default page will be fetched (commonly index.html or home.html).
Sometimes there will what looks like a whole lot of garbage tacked on to the end of the address - something like this: query?pg=q&kl=XX&q=english+on+line
Believe it or not, this is actually useful information. It contains extra information that you might have supplied, for instance by using a search tool.
Checking your address
In the process of copying addresses from one place to another it is very easy to make mistakes.
- Firstly, check that as far as you can see, the address that you typed matches exactly with the one you are copying from.
- Check and experiment with punctuation:
The tilde character ~ can often be mistaken for a dash -. You can usually find the tilde key to the top-left of the '1' key. Underscores _ also often get mistaken for dashes, or omitted completely. If there appears to be a space in the address, try using an underscore instead. You can get an underscore by typing shift-dash. Don't mix up t (letter of the alphabet) and + (addition symbol). Look at the last part of the address. If you have a '.htm', try adding an 'l' to the end to make it '.html'. If you have a 'html', try removing the 'l' to make it '.htm'.
Copy this address and paste it into the location bar of your browser. See if you can discover the correct address.http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/articles/+/troll/html
Try this one too: http://www~dept.usm.edu~engdept/cinderella/cinderella.html
(Try changing some ~ to -, + to t as well as using your knowledge about what Web addresses should look like)
Working Backwards
If none of this works, the next step is to work backwards on the URL until you find a sensible page. For instance, here is an address that's meant to be a page called "Storms Viewed from Space": http://athena.wednet.edu/curric/whether/storm.html
The address just gives you a "Not Found" page, and no matter how hard you try you can't figure out what's wrong (it's a little bit obvious, but just pretend ok!). The trick is to start stripping things off the URL, starting from the end. First take off the storm.html bit, which gives you: http://athena.wednet.edu/curric/whether/
Nope, that still doesn't seem to work. Try stripping it to the next '/' character: http://athena.wednet.edu/curric/
Ok, now we're getting somewhere! This is a valid page called "Curriculum", which has links to "Space", "Weather", "Earth", "Oceans" and "More". The next step is to navigate through the site until you find the page that you are looking for. The "Weather" link sounds like a good start. On the weather page there is a link to "Storms from Space" which leads us to our intended destination.
This method can work for both the case where the URL was a little wrong to start with, and the case where the page you wanted has been renamed, or the site has been shuffled around so it's not in the same place anymore.
Here are some links that used to work, however they don't anymore. See if you can find the correct address by following the steps above.
That didn't work - what next?
Sometimes this method will not work very well. You might have stripped your address right down to the host name, and find yourself somewhere that is nothing to do with the topic of the page you are looking for. This is usually the home page of an ISP or a university. If you find yourself all the way back to an ISP or university page home page, your chances of finding the page you want become quite slim. Here is something you can try:
Navigate through the ISP site to try to find a list of links to clients' or students' web pages. If you find this, look through these by running your mouse over each link (don't press the button, just run the cursor over the link), looking at the address as it appears in the status bar at the bottom of your browser. If you find one that looks the same or very similar to your original address, try clicking it. If it works, you may have hit the jackpot!
If you end up at a university page, you can get some hints of where to find the page from the address. For instance, in the address:
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/R&JPaintings.html
The "ENGLISH/classes" bit indicates that the page is located within the English Department's part of the site. From the university home page (http://www.emory.edu) you know to look for the English Department to start your search for the page.
If you can't find the page, you must face the unfortunate reality that the page you want has been removed from that server. This could mean that:
- The person who wrote the page has lost all interest in it and has pulled the plug.
- The site has been shifted to a different ISP with a different address.
If all else fails, your best bet might be to email the webmaster of the host site to ask if they know what has become of the page you are looking for.
Server Errors
No Response
Your web browser seems to be trying very hard to find the page, then gives up and comes back with an error that says something like "There was no response. The server could be down or is not responding". This error happens when your web browser decides that it can't fetch the page because it didn't get any response from the server. The cause of this could be:
- The server is 'down' - the computer that holds the web page is simply not working, or not plugged into the network.
- The network is too slow - there is too much congestion on the network to get your request for the page through.
- Your own network connection is not working for some reason.
In the event of getting one of these errors, your best (and only) strategy is to just try again later. The problem could be fixed quite quickly (in a few minutes), however if the problem is with the remote server, it might take hours or even days for the server administrators to do something about it. Occasionally servers might be permanently taken out of commission. Sometimes the pages will be transferred to another server (try using a search engine to relocate them), otherwise they will be permanently unreachable.
Unable to Locate the Server
You type in your address and your browser comes back right away to say that it is unable to locate the server. This means that the host name part of the address you typed in doesn't exist, probably because there's an error in the address. Check it and try again!