Finding Lost Web Sites

Netscape Adventures

Netscape
Adventures
Cynthia B. Leshin
President of XPLORA
Copyright 1997, 316 pp., Paper
ISBN 0-13-255092-X

Finding Lost Web Sites
by Cynthia B. Leshin

The Internet is a dynamic and rapidly changing environment. Information may be in one place today and either gone or in a new location tomorrow. New sites appear daily; others disappear. Some sites provide forwarding address information; others will not. As you travel in cyberspace and find that a resource you are looking for can no longer be found at a given Internet address, there are several steps you can take to find out if the site has a new address.

• Check for a new Internet address or link, often provided on the site of the old address.

• Shorten the URL.

The format for a URL is: protocol//server-name/path

Try deleting the last section of the URL (path), so that the URL ends with the domain name or server name (com, edu, net, org). For example, you may be looking for NASA's links to astronomy sites. Take the original URL provided for the site, in this case http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/lfs/other_sites.html, and delete the last part of the address lfs/other_sites.html leaving http://quest.arc.nasa.gov.You will most likely get to NASA's Home Page and can navigate to the specific topic or category you are looking for.

• Type in a company name for the URL.

Companies usually use either their name, some part of their name, or an abbreviation as their domain name that becomes their URL.

Netscape 2.02 and 3.0 accept abbreviated Net addresses, without the http://www. prefix. If you type a single word as your URL, Netscape adds the prefix http://www. and the suffix .com. For example, to connect to Netscape's Home Page, type Netscape. Microsoft Internet Explorer requires the http://www. prefix.

• Identify a domain name or server name.

If you are trying to find an educational institution (edu), non-profit organization (org), networking organization (net), government (gov), or military agency (mil), identify a portion of their name that they may have chosen for their domain name. For example, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), is an non-profit organization (org) that has changed the location of its Web site several times. Typing in an old address http://gaia1.ies.wisc.edu/research/pngfores/welcome gives this message: HTTP/1.0 404 Object Not Found

To find the Rainforest Action Network, look at their name and try to identify what they may have chosen for their domain name. Since Rainforest Action Network is long, perhaps they chose their acronym, RAN. Try entering a URL using RAN and org. In this instance type http://www.ran.org. This URL connects to the Rainforest Action Network's Home Page.

• Do a keyword search using search engines.

EXAMPLE 1: Finding a new URL for the Rainforest Action Network.

When researching the new URL for the Rainforest Action Network, a search engine such as Infoseek Ultra, Alta Vista, or Excite can be used. For this example, we will use Infoseek Ultra. Type in the keywords rainforest action network and enclose the keywords with quotation marks as suggested by this search tool. Otherwise all instances of the words rainforest, action, and network will be found and returned in the search results.

Entering "rainforest action network" in Infoseek Ultra produced the link to RAN's Home Page.

Infoseek Ultra seems to provide the highest relevant returns for keyword searches at this time.

NOTE

When the same search was done using Infoseek Ultra, and the word rainforest was made into two words rain forest, the search did not immediately provide the Home Page for RAN. It is important to use the same keywords as the organization or company uses. In this case, Rainforest Action Network, not Rain Forest Action Network. Although the Web site will eventually be found, it may take longer to review an extensive list of returns.

EXAMPLE 2: Finding a new URL for Bucknell Engineering Beast project.

When the URL http://www.eg.bucknel.edu/~beast96 for Bucknell Engineering's Beast 96 project was entered, Netscape returned this message.

Since no forwarding URL was given, the Infoseek Ultra search engine was used. To identify keywords for the search, refer to the Web site information in your book (in this case, Internet Investigations in Electronics, page 77).

Beast 96 is a project with Bucknell Engineering Animatronics Systems Technology. The keywords selected for the search were Bucknell Engineering. Since two words are being entered in the search, use Infoseek's suggestions to place keywords in quotation marks, limiting the search to only returns that contain both words Bucknell and Engineering.

Review the search engine returns for the Web site you are searching for. In this case, the fourth return indicated that the Beast project could be found at the given site http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/beast

Finding information on the Internet is often a Treasure Hunt. Become an Explorer and your Journey will become an Adventure.

Legal Statement