why do websites have different endings (com, net, org) what do they mean?
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A website URL is actually read backwards from right to left, and each bit is used to narrow down the selection. Lets break apart the example [www.reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com)
What this is saying is:
* **com**: This is called the “Top level domain,” and is the most broad way to filter down the website we’re trying to find (besides country entries like “.ca”), and is sort of like asking a broad question like “Is it a plant or animal.” **.com** means it’s a “commercial,” website, as opposed to an organization, govornment website, etc. though these days the distinctions don’t mean much other than **.edu** which is reserved for educational institutions.
* **reddit**: This is just the domain, and tells the browser which website we actually want to go to, sort of like asking “what animal are we talking about.”
* **www**: this is called the “sub-domain,” and is a way of specifying what part of the website we want to access. **www** translates to “world wide web,” which is our way of saying we want to access the public part of the website. Websites might have various sub-domains EX: [www.google.com](https://www.google.com) goes to the search engine, but [docs.google.com](https://docs.google.com) goes to Google Docs.
It’s kind of weird since that part of the URL is read right-to-left, but the **subdirectory** (the part that looks like **/pages/video_player/somepage.html**) is read left-to-right and specifies which folders on the web-server to look in to find the webpage, no different than how you might have your essay saved under **my_documents/college_essays/english_paper_final_edit_final.docx**
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