Why I need a URL from you

I manage approximately 25 websites and many thousands of webpages.  Because of this, I am not able to easily find an individual page that I am responsible for managing--there are so many of them that I rely on a special mechanism called a Uniform Resource Locator (or URL for short).  When given a URL, I am able to get to a specific webpage easily.  Without a URL, it is difficult or impossible for me to find an individual webpage (because I cannot remember where they all are).

This may seem strange to you.  This is probably because you only deal with a small subset of the webpages that I manage, so a description like, "our info page" might be enough to get you to

There are two things for which I need a URL: either (1) you have requested a page change or (2) you have requested a link to be added to a page.  For the first request, I will need the URL of the page you want changed.  For the second request, I will need (1) the URL of the page you want the link to go on and (2) the URL of the page to which you want the link to go.

How to get the URL I need

Thankfully, getting a URL is as simple as pie!  In all web browsers (such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera), there is a URL bar.  It is sometimes called the "navigation bar" or the "location bar."  Here are some examples of this location:

Firefox

Chrome

Note that in Chrome, the "http://" is hidden.

Internet Explorer

After you find the URL bar in your browser, you can select it by clicking on it (with your mouse) and then right clicking (click the button on the right side of your mouse) and then clicking copy.  You can then email me the page by going to your email and right clicking in the body of your email and then clicking paste.

Make sure you give me the right URL

It is important to give the the right URL and not the wrong one.  Here are URLs that you may think are correct, but are actually wrong:

1. If you entered information on a page and want a link to the information you entered, you may be tempted to send me the URL of the page where you entered the information.  This is actually wrong, because that URL probably only has a form to fill out information and does not tell me where the information you filled out is.  There are some exceptions to this rule, so to check if you have the right URL, put it into your URL bar and hit enter.  If you get to the page you want me to link to, you have the right URL.  Otherwise, you don't.

What will happen if I don't get a URL

If I don't get a URL but I have been asked to make a page change, I will ask you for the URL that you are talking about.  At this point, it will be tempting to explain how you got to a page.  For example, you may want say something like, "I went to our homepage and clicked on the info link."  This, however, is not a URL.  If you do not send me a URL, I will ask for a URL.  All web URLs begin with "http://" or "https://" and that is how you can tell that a description (like "the info page that is on our homepage") of how to get to a page is not a URL.  (Note that not all web URLs have a "www" in them.  "www" is merely the default and can often be omitted from a URL)  Another way to tell if something is a URL is to put it into the URL bar of your web browser and hit enter.  If you show up at the page you were expecting, you entered a URL.  If you showed up at a search engine result, you did not enter a URL.

As you can see in the above image, Internet Explorer is showing you that this is not a URL.  When you hit the enter button after entering "the info page that is on our homepage" into the URL bar, you are directed to a different URL: http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+info+page+that+is+on+our+homepage&src=ie9tr .  This is a search engine URL ("bing" is a search engine like Google except it isn't very good), and it means that Internet Explorer is saying that since you did not provide a URL, you now have to search for your page by looking through the search results.

Home  |  Up  |  Copyleft  |  Contact