Understanding Website Addresses

If you live near public transportation, you can make an informed decision whether or not to have a car.
No matter where you live, deciding not to use the internet is a more challenging decision.
You will come across many scams on the internet.
Understanding the format of website addresses can help you recognize internet scams.
This web page will explain the format of website addresses.
The address of the web page you are reading now is:
https://christopherchapman.org/understanding-website-addresses
Below I will use the address of this web page as an example.
The position of where a piece of text is in a website address is critical.
In addition, the hierarchy of the elements of a website address is not a simple left to right as an English speaker might expect.
In my explanation below, I will follow the order of the hierarchy instead of just left to right.

org

In my example, org is an example of a top-level domain.
Other top-level domains that you may have encountered are:

If you are from outside the United States, you will also likely be familiar with your country's country code.
Regardless of where you live, you might also come across the following 3 top-level domains:

For whatever reason, scammers often use the network, top, and vip top-level domains.
Just as geographic locations can have similar sounding names, the net and network top-level domains share their first 3 letters.
Just as any kind of crime can happen in any neighborhood, any top-level domain can have scams.
However, some neighborhoods are more dangerous than others.
Please treat the network, top, and vip top-level domains as dangerous neighborhoods.

christopherchapman

christopherchapman is the domain.
Think of a domain as a plot of land within a top-level domain.
Just like an actual plot of land, once someone owns a domain under a given top-level domain it is his or hers to use.
I chose to use the .org top level domain because that was the most mainstream of the website addresses that were not already taken.

www

If to the left of christopherchapman there were www that would be a subdomain.
Think of a subdomain as a further division of a domain.
I am trying to keep my website very simple, so my website does not use subdomains.
For the sake of explanation below I will add "org." between "https://" and "christopherchapman".

The position where text is matters.
That theoretical org on the left would be a subdomain if I had configured my website to have the text org in the specific position.

understanding-website-addresses

understanding-website-addresses is a file name.
For a more complicated website, such as a shopping website, {top-level domain}/ might be followed by a directory, a file, then some variables.

https://

https describes how your browser connects to a website.
The "s" does not mean that some third-party has done an investigation as to whether a website is secure.
The "s" after "http" merely means that there is encryption between your browser and a website.

A Non-US Website Example

The website below is presumably intended for residents of the United Kingdom.
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone
What I would like you to notice is the country code of uk for United Kingdom.
Among the internet country codes is tv.
tv is the country code for the country of Tuvalu.