What is a URL?

A URL is, Uniform Resource Locator.  This is a techie way of naming a line of text that uniquely specifies a destination.

Each server (the computer that hosts Web site files) has its very own IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is a long string of numbers and dots. However, since most of us can remember names easier than numbers, the domain name system was created. 

What is  www?

That stands for World Wide Web! If you really wanted to, you could type in a Web site's IP number to pull up a site, but it's much easier to use the domain name and let the server figure it out using its DNS (domain-name-server) software.

Each top-level domain name has a suffix that indicates what kind of organization is registered for the site:

  com - commercial businesses
  net - network organizations
  edu - educational institutions
  org - nonprofit organizations
  gov - government agencies
  mil - military

As more and more organizations reserve their own domain names, the .coms and the .nets, in particular, are becoming scarce. More suffixes are in the works and beginning to appear.  The more popular new ones are: info and tv.

Not another analogy!

Imagine the World Wide Web as being the largest shopping mall in the whole wide world. It is so big that when you drive up to it, you have to park far away. The good news is that wherever you park you can catch a trolley and be transported anywhere you want to go within the shopping mall.  If you don't know where you want to be dropped off, you can ask to go to the information desk (Kiosk) for directions.

The shopping mall - the WWW
Your parked car - a computer to access the WWW
The trolley to take you to the mall - a browser
The kiosk - a search engine or your bookmarks / favorites
The store - a specific web site with a domain name