Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Digital Literacy How the Web Works The World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and URLs

Yasmine Yuma
Yasmine Yuma
1,486 Points
Posted by Yasmine Yuma
Yasmine Yuma
1,486 Points

I know it may seem like a stupid question, but - does the "www." part of the URL have a particular name?

I thought about that when Joy explained clean URLs and said they're only made of the domain name, noticing they omit the "http://" but saying nothing about the "www.". I figured they're omitted because it's basically just a way to say it's a website on the World Wide Web and that's it, but I ask, again, do they have a specific name besides being an acronym?

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,271 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,271 Points

It's called the "Subdomain".

It goes with the second-level domain and the top-level domain to form the resource name.

And the "http://" part is called the protocol.

Jesse Schoonveld
Jesse Schoonveld
2,943 Points
Jesse Schoonveld
Jesse Schoonveld
2,943 Points

It's a subdomain. it's used to distinguish the web site of a domain from the FTP server or mail server (which would be ftp.example.com and mail.example.com, etc).