File Extensions
You can tell a bit about the software used to create the web page you're reading by looking at the URL in your web browser.
The file extension displayed in your web browser can reveal the software language used to build then deliver your web page.
What's a file extension? It's a clue used by a web server to decide what language to use to process a web page request. For example, the file extension .html or .htm is the most basic file extension. Typically these web pages are stored as static files on the web server instead of created dynamically on the fly when a page is requested by a web browser. These HTML pages are self-contained.
Here are a couple examples of website URL so you can see what I mean by file extensions. The first is from the New York Times and, apparently, their web pages are static HTML pages:

The important bit is the .html
file extension added to the malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html
file name.
Here is a more modern website URL where the file extension is removed:

Notice there is no file extension added to the items-i-love
file name.
Removing file extensions is considered better than using a file extension. The primary reason is portability. If you change your website publishing software, and it uses a different programming language, you likely will not have to change all your web page URLs. The New York Times, for example, likely would have to change all their .html pages to remove the file extension.
People also like to distinguish between web content that is meant to be downloaded on to a computer (where a file extension may matter) and content displayed in a web browser (where a file extension really does not matter because the server is configured).
Personally, the more important bit about URLs is less the file extension and more the file name. In both the examples above, you can tell what the page is about because the file names describe the content. Clearly the Times story is about the missing airplane from Malaysia and the Etsy story is about stuff SeffyGHops loves. Writing code to redirect or strip off file names is somewhat trivial compared to renaming all the file names for your content.
Here are the most common file extensions you can see on the internet. While not as exciting as looking for license plates from different places when you’re stuck in the back seat of a car on a road trip, spotting some online of these could be fun.
File Extension(s) | Language |
---|---|
.asp | Active Server Pages (ASP) Classic |
.aspx, .axd, .asx, .asmx, .ashx | ASP.NET |
.cfm | ColdFusion |
.yaws | Erlang |
.htm, .html, .xhtml, .shtml, .jhtml | HyperText Markup Language (HTML) |
.jsp, .jspx, .wss, .do, .action | Java |
.pl | Perl |
.php, .php4, .php3, .phtml | PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor |
.py | Python |
.rb, .rhtml | Ruby |
.rss, .xml | Extended Markup Language (XML) |
.cgi, .dll, .fcgi | Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Dynamic Link Library (DLL), and Fast CGI. Usually written in C or Perl but could be other languages. |
Of course, there are many file extensions used in computing. These are only the most common website URL file extensions you will see online.
You also might notice some of these file extensions use three characters instead of four, .htm
instead of .html
. Likely the three-character extensions are on Windows servers which use tightly defined rules for the length of file extensions. And you might notice the .shtml
extension which, while it appears to be a static HTML page, actually is built from files called server-side include files; for example, the top and bottom of the web page might each be in one file yet included on every page of a website.
There also are fake file extensions you might see, extensions created by one person to work on their web server. Someone might like The Flintstones, for example, and rename all their PHP scripts with a .fred file extension. Then configure their server to process pages with the .fred file extension with the PHP modules on the web server. Instead of my-favorite-page.php
, you would see my-favorite-page.fred
in the top of your web browser URL bar.
Learn More
Website URL File Extensions
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1614520/what-are-common-file-extensions-for-web-programming-languages
A List of File Formats and Extensions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats
http://www.fileinfo.com/filetypes/web
File Naming Guidelines
http://duckdigital.com/DAM/?p=23
http://wac.osu.edu/tutorials/bestpractices/organize.htm
To Use File Extensions, Or Not To Use Them
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3631153/how-come-some-site-urls-do-not-include-a-file-extension
Also In The April 2014 Issue

How to Make a Twitter Bot
There are a ton of ways to make a Twitter bot. Here are a number of resources, ideas, and clues to follow up.

What is an Algorithm?
Algorithms control our lives online and offline. Here are some examples to show what is an algorithm and how they work.

How to Build Example Bot
I have updated the installation instructions for this Github project to make it even easier to install and play with.

Bot Makers
A collection of bot makers and professor types attend an online bot convention to talk about Twitter bots and more.

File Extensions
You can tell a bit about the software used to create the web page you're reading by looking at the URL in your web browser.

Traceroute
A computer command used to diagnose network problems also lets you see how data hops across the internet.

Lisp
An ancient language from 1958 lives on and is used to solve modern problems in programming and computer science.

How to Build a Slightly Complicated Website
Some tips on how to find online publishing services and use them to create your website.

What is an API?
APIs can be a fun, easy to use, and easy to learn way to retrieve and mash up data online.

April 2014 News Wire
Interesting stories about computer science, software programming, and technology for the month of March 2014.

Objects
Many programming languages organize their code into objects, to model their applications and make their code more reusable.

April 2014 Learn More Links
Links from the bottom of all the April 2014 articles, collected in one place for you to print, share, or bookmark.