build a new page
Understanding a web address
The http at the beginning of the address stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a language used to request and transfer webpages. The www stands for World Wide Web, and the .com or .edu completes the beginning of the address.
In other words, in the address http://www.applyweb.com/apply/kstate/index.html, the words http://www.applyweb.com/ are taking us to a large electronic file cabinet. Inside this cabinet are files and folders. In a well-maintained cabinet, the files will be found in folders (organization is key to web develpment). Each folder may have more folders inside. Taking this analogy to the web, a folder is signified by a back slash. In the above example, we have opened the applyweb file cabinet, found the apply folder, and then located the kstate folder inside it. In the kstate folder, we are looking at a file named index.html.
A folder can have many different files inside. However, the only ones we view live on the web end in .htm or .html (different spellings of the same file type). Unless we specify a certain .html file, we will see the first file in the folder, the index file.
Therefore, if you typed http://www.applyweb.com/apply/kstate as the address, the web would automatically take you to http://www.applyweb.com/apply/kstate/index.html. The only time it would fail to do so is if there is no index file inside the folder.
If you wish to view a page other than the index page, you must specify it to the exact character. On the Consider K-State website, the address http://consider.k-state.edu/admissions/ calls up the Admissions homepage (the index.htm file). Adding ged.htm at the end, making the address read http://consider.k-state.edu/admissions/ged.htm, brings up a different file. Again, this is because the file is located in the same folder in our cabinet as the index page; we just have to do a little more searching to find it.
Note: The index.htm file isn't actually a directory of any sort. It is simply called that because it is located in a folder in the same place a directory would be located, and by naming the file index, we replace the directory.
Clear as mud? If so, you may consider rereading the preceding paragraphs once or twice before moving on.