How to Cite a Website

Same facts, different arrangement: APA leads with the date, MLA puts the title in quotes with Title Case, Harvard adds Available at:, IEEE numbers the entry. The generator renders all five from one paste.

• Author — the byline at the top of the article, or the "About" page for organizational authorship. Not the webmaster, not the CMS.
• Date — under the byline, or at the article's end ("Last updated…"). Check both.
• Page title — the headline on the page itself, not the browser tab (which often appends the site name).
• Site name — the publication's name as it brands itself: Science Daily, not sciencedaily.com.
• URL — the full address of the specific page. Cite the page you read, never just the homepage.

No author → the title moves into the author position (APA, MLA) or the entry starts with the title (Chicago). No date → APA writes (n.d.), Harvard (no date), MLA leans on the access date. No site name → use a cleaned-up domain. Every style has a defined fallback — the generator applies the right one automatically, so a sparse page still produces a valid citation.

Harvard: required — (Accessed: 12 June 2026). MLA: recommended for undated or changing pages. IEEE: included parenthetically — (accessed Jun. 12, 2026). APA: only for content designed to change (wikis, dashboards). Chicago: when no publication date exists. The generator records the access date at generation time and formats it per style.

Most "how do I cite a ___?" questions about the web reduce to the same five pieces with one twist each:

• News articles — the newspaper or outlet is the container/site name; the journalist is the author.
• Blog posts — same as articles; the blog name is the container. Personal blogs: the blogger is author and effectively the site.
• Videos — channel as author, platform as container, timestamp instead of pages for quotes: full YouTube guide.
• Social media posts — the account as author; the post text (up to ~20 words) stands in for a title; platform as site.
• Government pages and reports — the agency as author; skip the site name when it repeats the agency: report patterns.
• Online encyclopedias/wikis — entry title as the page; these are 'changing content,' so APA wants a retrieval date here.

The wrinkle with websites is the missing page number. APA: (Alvarez, 2024) for paraphrases; for quotes, count paragraphs — (Alvarez, 2024, para. 3) — or name a section. MLA: author alone, (Alvarez); never invent numbering the page doesn't have. Harvard: (Alvarez, 2024) with no page needed. Chicago notes: the footnote simply omits the page. IEEE: the bracket [4] carries no locator anyway.

No author in any style → a shortened title stands in: ("How Memory Consolidation Works," 2024) in APA; ("How Memory") in MLA.

Citing it correctly doesn't make it a good source. The two-minute credibility check: a named author or accountable organization · a date · an outlet with editorial standards · claims that themselves cite evidence · a purpose that isn't purely selling. Anonymous, undated pages on ad-farms format just as nicely as journal articles — graders penalize the source, not the formatting. When a web page cites a study, chase the study and cite that directly; it's both stronger evidence and a better citation.

For a thorough framework for evaluating web sources before you cite them, Purdue OWL's guide to evaluating sources is one of the most widely cited free resources in academic writing instruction.