Creating a bibliography entry for a website follows a predictable pattern regardless of citation style: you gather the author, title, website name, publication date, and URL, then arrange them in the order your style guide requires. The three most common styles (MLA, APA, and Chicago) each have slightly different rules, but once you know the template for your style, every website citation works the same way.
Information to Collect First
Before you format anything, pull these details from the webpage you’re citing:
- Author: Look for a byline near the title or at the bottom of the article. This could be a person or an organization.
- Page title: The headline or title of the specific page, not the overall website name.
- Website name: The name of the site that published the content (for example, “Mayo Clinic” or “BBC News”).
- Publication or last-updated date: Check near the byline, at the top of the article, or in the page’s footer.
- URL: Copy the full web address from your browser’s address bar.
Not every page will have all of these. That’s normal, and each style has rules for handling missing pieces (covered below).
MLA Format
MLA uses a “containers” system. The page title goes in quotation marks, the website name is italicized, and you end with the URL. Here is the general template:
Author Last Name, First Name. “Title of Page.” Website Name, Publisher (if different from website name), Date, URL.
A finished entry looks like this:
Garcia, Maria. “How Urban Farms Are Feeding Cities.” National Geographic, 14 June 2024, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/urban-farms.
If the publisher and the website name are the same, you don’t need to list the publisher separately. MLA does not require an access date unless the content is likely to change over time, such as a wiki page. When you do include one, add “Accessed” followed by the date at the end of the entry.
APA Format
APA 7th edition italicizes the page title (not the website name) and places the date in parentheses right after the author. The template looks like this:
Author Last Name, Initials. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Website Name. URL
A finished entry:
Garcia, M. (2024, June 14). How urban farms are feeding cities. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/urban-farms
Notice APA uses sentence case for the title, meaning only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. The URL goes at the very end with no period after it.
When a government agency or organization is the author, use the most specific agency as the author and list parent agencies in the source position. For instance, if you’re citing a page from the National Institute of Mental Health, that agency is the author, and you’d place “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health” in the source element so the reader can trace the organizational hierarchy.
APA also has a rule about retrieval dates: include one only when the content is designed to change over time and isn’t archived (like a social media profile or a page that updates its statistics regularly). For static articles, skip the retrieval date.
Chicago Format
Chicago style gives you two systems: notes-bibliography and author-date. Most humanities courses use notes-bibliography, where the bibliography entry looks like this:
Author Last Name, First Name. “Title of Page.” Website Name. Publication or revision date. URL.
A finished entry:
Garcia, Maria. “How Urban Farms Are Feeding Cities.” National Geographic. June 14, 2024. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/urban-farms.
Chicago requires an access date only when the page has no publication or revision date. In that case, you’d write “Accessed” followed by the date before the URL:
Yale University. “About Yale: Yale Facts.” Accessed March 8, 2022. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.
Chicago is also the most flexible of the three styles. For informal web content, the manual says it’s sometimes enough to simply describe the source in your text rather than create a formal bibliography entry.
When the Author or Date Is Missing
Websites frequently lack a named author, a publication date, or both. Each style handles these gaps differently, but the underlying logic is similar.
If there’s no author, move the title to the author position. Don’t substitute “Anonymous” unless the page actually says “Anonymous.” In MLA, the entry simply starts with the title in quotation marks. In APA, the italicized title comes first, followed by the date in parentheses.
If there’s no date, MLA allows you to omit the date entirely. APA uses “n.d.” (short for “no date”) in both the reference list and the in-text citation. Chicago uses an access date instead.
If both are missing, combine the two rules. In APA, the entry would follow this pattern: Title of page. (n.d.). Website Name. URL. In MLA, you’d start with the title and leave the date spot empty.
Formatting the URL
All three styles place the URL at the end of the entry. A few practical tips keep your bibliography clean:
- Use a stable link. If the page offers a DOI (a permanent digital identifier common on academic sites) or a permalink, prefer that over the regular URL. DOIs never break, while regular links sometimes do.
- Don’t add a period after the URL in APA. MLA and Chicago do end with a period.
- Drop “https://” in MLA unless your instructor says otherwise. APA and Chicago keep the full URL including “https://”.
- Don’t hyperlink the URL in printed work. In digital documents, a clickable link is fine as long as the full address is visible.
Tools That Build Citations for You
If you’re citing many sources, a citation generator can save time. These tools let you paste a URL and automatically pull the author, title, and date into the correct format.
- Citation Machine: Free tier supports APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and over 7,000 additional styles. It can export directly to Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
- BibMe: Free for APA citations with basic grammar checking. Citations are saved for seven days on the free plan.
- Zotero: A free, open-source reference manager with a browser extension that saves sources as you research. It generates formatted bibliographies in thousands of styles.
- Mendeley Cite: A free Microsoft Word plugin that inserts in-text citations and builds your bibliography inside the document. Supports over 8,000 citation styles.
- Citavi: Free for up to 100 references. Doubles as a reference manager and task organizer, with support for more than 11,000 citation styles.
A word of caution: auto-generated citations are a starting point, not a finished product. These tools sometimes grab the wrong date, misidentify the author, or skip the website name. Always compare the output against the templates above and fix any errors before submitting your work.
Putting the Bibliography Together
Once you have all your individual entries, the bibliography page itself follows a few universal rules across styles. Entries are listed in alphabetical order by the first element (usually the author’s last name, or the title when there’s no author). Each entry uses a hanging indent, meaning the first line is flush left and every subsequent line is indented half an inch. Double-space the entire list in MLA and APA. Chicago bibliographies are also typically double-spaced, though some instructors allow single spacing within entries with a blank line between them.
The page title varies by style. MLA calls it “Works Cited,” APA calls it “References,” and Chicago calls it “Bibliography.” Use the label that matches your assigned style, centered at the top of the page.