Website structure

• The Internet is a collection of computers and servers connected together. The Internet can be used to share files including music, videos and photos as well as computer programs.
• The Internet also is built up of servers called web servers which host webpages.
• The world wide web (WWW or W3) is a platform in which we build webpages and host files that will be available on the Internet.

• To access a file or webpage on the Internet we use something called a URL or Uniform Resource Locator.
• Most websites are built up of many webpages that are linked together using hyperlinks.
• Navigation bars, featured on most websites, often use links to other webpages on the website.

A URL can give us a lot about a website’s structure:

• https://www.example.com/
  https://www.example.com/documentation/
  https://www.example.com/documentation/policy.pdf

• When a website designer/developer first looks at what a client requires them to build, one of the first steps that the designer/developer takes is developing a map of all the pages, often this is done on paper.
• This is called a sitemap.

There are two kinds of navigation structures:

• Linear
  • E.g. page 1 goes to page 2 and page 2 goes to page 3 etc
• Hierarchical
  • Main navigation bar goes to any page on the site

• URLs need to be formatted in a specific way to ensure that the web browser and any other program that uses the URL can understand it. URLs are therefore standardised.
• Some rules to note:
  • URLs should not contain spaces (use dashes [-] instead)
  • A forward slash in a URL is a key character and has a special meaning
  • Emojis can actually be used in a URL (meaning you can name files with Emojis!)
  • URL should be as descriptive as possible

http://www.buy.com/about/products

When you are creating a URL, follow several rules;

1. Keep the URL short
2. Use keywords in the URL, e.g. if the page is about searching then name it appropriately
3. URLs should not contain spaces, use the dash instead.