Addresses and ports
Why some apps give you a web link and others give you a host and a number.
Two kinds of app
Most apps we offer are websites. You get a link, you click it, your browser opens it. Nothing else to know.
A few are not websites at all. A Minecraft server and a VPN both speak their own language rather than the web's, so there is nothing for a browser to open. For those you get an address and a port number, and you type both into the program that connects to them.
Why the port has an unusual number
Programs like these normally have a standard port — Minecraft's is 25565. But we have one public address, and a port can only lead to one server. If everyone's Minecraft used 25565, only the first customer would work.
So each server gets its own number instead. The port is not an afterthought stuck onto the address — it is the half of the address that identifies your server specifically. Leave it out and you reach nothing.
Type the address exactly as your console page shows it, colon and number included.
It will not open in a browser
Pasting one of these addresses into a browser gives an error, always, even when the server is perfectly healthy. The browser speaks HTTP and the server does not. It is not a useful test of whether anything is wrong.
To check whether the server is up, look at the Status line on your console page. We ask the server directly, in its own protocol.