A domain name is one portion of the URL, or address, of a Web site. Components of a domain name are separated by a "." (pronounced dot).

For example, the Houghton Mifflin Education Place domain name is www.eduplace.com.

• The first segment, www, stands for the host server, the World Wide Web, where the site is found.
• The second segment, eduplace, identifies the company or organization name.
• The last segment, .com, reflects the type of organization--a commercial institution. This is called the "top-level domain name." Other common top-level domain names include .gov (government agency), .org (organization), .edu (educational institution), and .net (network).

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Simply stated, a URL is a site's complete "address" on the Internet. Just as your home address is made up of several components--house number, street, city, state, zip code--the URL for a World Wide Web document has four components, each separated by a slash (/).

All Web browsers display a Web site's URL in a rectangular box at the top of the screen (see if you can find the URLs in activity 1). As you navigate the Web you can see how the URL changes. Or, type in the URL and go directly where you want to go.