Citing a website in MLA follows the nine core elements rather than a fixed template, which is what makes it flexible and what makes it confusing. This page shows the MLA 9 pattern for a web page, explains what counts as the container, and covers the URL rule that catches almost everyone out.
MLA assembles every reference from the same nine core elements, taking whichever ones the source actually has. For a web page you normally use five of them, and the container is the part people get wrong.
MLA uses author and page. Web pages rarely have page numbers, so most web citations reduce to the author alone, and when there is no author the shortened title takes its place.
Named author: (Okafor)
No author, shortened title: (“Air Quality”)
Author named in the sentence: Okafor argues that sleep debt compounds.
Numbered paragraphs, if the source numbers them: (Okafor, par. 4)
No named author
“Air Quality and Health.” World Health Organization, 11 Mar. 2024, www.who.int/example.
Named author
Okafor, Ngozi. “Why Sleep Debt Compounds.” Sleep Science Review, 4 Feb. 2024, example.com/sleep-debt.
With an access date, for a page with no date
“Consumer Price Index Summary.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov/example. Accessed 20 Aug. 2026.
The nine core elements cover more than they first appear to, but a few web situations need a decision rather than a lookup.
| No author and no obvious organisation | Start with the page title in quotation marks and shorten it for the in-text citation. |
|---|---|
| The publisher and the site name are the same | Give it once, as the container. MLA does not want it repeated as publisher. |
| A blog post on a larger platform | The blog is the first container and the platform is the second, listed after it. |
| A social media post | Use the account handle as author, the full text of a short post as the title in quotation marks, then the platform and date. |
| A YouTube video | The uploader is the author, the video title goes in quotation marks, YouTube is the container in italics. |
| The page has no date | Omit the date and add an access date at the end, which is where an access date genuinely earns its place in MLA. |
MLA 8 replaced the old system of a separate template per source type with nine core elements that apply to everything. That change is what makes MLA feel harder than it is: instead of looking up the rule for a website, you decide which of the nine elements your source actually has, and write them in order.
For a web page the answer is usually five. Author, title of source, title of container, publication date, location. The website is the container, which is the piece people get wrong most, because it feels like the source rather than the thing holding it. The test is simple: if you took the page away, the site would still exist, so the site is the container.
MLA 9 also allows a second container, and this is where database and repository sources differ from plain web pages. An article you found in JSTOR has the journal as its first container and JSTOR as its second. A plain web page has only one, so if you find yourself listing two containers for an ordinary website, one of them is probably not a container at all.
Start the entry with the page title in quotation marks. In the text, use a shortened form of that title in place of the author name so the reader can find the entry in your Works Cited list.
MLA 9 treats the protocol as noise that does not help a reader find the source. It is a formatting convention rather than a technical one, so the link still works if a reader types it.
Give the author alone, or a shortened title if there is no author. Do not invent paragraph numbers unless the page itself numbers its paragraphs.
Give the site name in italics as the title, then the publisher if it differs, and the URL. In practice you usually want a specific page, because a whole-site citation tells the reader very little.
List the site as the container and the publisher after it, but only when they genuinely differ. MLA 9 tells you to omit the publisher when it would duplicate the container name.
MLA treats it as optional. Include it when the page has no publication date, or when you are citing something likely to change. Otherwise it is noise.
Give it in full rather than shortening it, but drop the protocol as MLA 9 requires. Do not substitute a URL shortener, since those services expire.
Cite the archived version rather than the cache, since caches are transient. The Internet Archive gives a stable URL and preserves the date, which is what a reader needs.