| http | Protocol. This is used to distinguish one transfer method from another. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)is the default protocol, but others exist; FTP, TELNET, GOPHER, to name a few. |
| : | Separator. A colon is used to signify the end of the protocol and the beginning of the next part of the URL. |
| // | Double Forward Slashes. Two forward slashes are used to indicate that what follows is the host name of a computer. That computer may or may not be connected to the Internet. |
| www | Host Name. Host names are often the same as a computer's local name, but they don't have to be. A single domain can have hundreds or even thousands of host names and a single computer can have multiple host names. For instance, ftp.cport.com and www.cport.com reside on the same physical computer, while mail.cport.com resides on another. Most of the time, this part of the URL will be www. |
| cport.com | Internet Domain Name. Internet domains are used to group computers together under a common organization. A company may or may not choose to assign its computers Internet host names. If a computer is given a host name within a particular Internet domain, |
| / | Single Forward Slash. The leftmost single forward slash in any URL always means the same thing. It is the root directory; the directory which contains the collective content of the entire realm of the FTP server, which itself is comprised of many subdirectories and files . If there are no subdirectories involved, this slash is very often omitted. In such cases, the slash is assumed present and the root directory is considered the "working directory." |
| ~foo | Subdirectory/Home Directory. The parts of a URL following the leftmost forward slash can be either subdirectories or files. In this case, if there is both a foo subdirectory and a foo file, the file is assumed to be the target object unless foo is followed by another slash, in which case foo is considered a subdirectory. If there is only one foo, the server first looks to see if it is a file and processes it as a file if that is the case. If it is found to be a directory, then it is processed as a directory. |
| index.html | File Name. This names the file which contains the actual content displayed in the target browser. If no file name is specified, most web servers will display the content of a file with a particular name or one which matches one of several names. Cport's web server is configured to display the first file it finds, in alphabetical order, that matches the specification index.*. This means that index.htm will be used before index.html and that either of those files would be chosen over index.shtml. For this reason, it is important not to upload any other files that match the index.* criteria. For example, some text editors create backup files with special characters for file extensions (the characters to the right of the file name). Since special characters are processed alphabetically before standard alphanumeric characters, index.$$$ would be displayed if the server was given a choice of index.$$$, index.htm or index.html. This is somewhat of a problem because a web server does not know what to do with $$$ and, in some cases, the file may display as plain text rather than as a web page. |