Tech Speak Now

Domain Names 101

With out a domain name, web sites are specified by an IP address.  What is an IP address?  It’s an identifier which is used by computers or humans to determine the location of a server or website.  Nonetheless, for humans, an IP address, (which is expressed in a numerical format), can be challenging to keep in mind.  This is why domain names had been invented.  With a domain name, a human can locate a website through far more user-friendly words or phrases.  And while numbers could be a part of a domain name, they generally do not make up all of it, like what is seen with an IP address.

In terms of format, domain names have various parts.  The initial component is recognized as the URL, (which stands for Uniform Resource Locator).  The URL tells the browser what the domain name is going to point to.  This will normally be ‘http’, which means the browser can expect to locate a hypertext document.  In layman’s terms this means webpage.  Inside the rare instances the URL isn’t ‘http’ it may well be ‘ftp’, which means file transfer protocol.  A webmaster would opt to use ftp if they would like visitors to download files from their server.

The second component of the domain name will be “www,” which stands for “World Wide Internet.”  This phrase lets computers and humans know the web site the domain name is pointing to is indeed from the web.  It really is followed by the actual domain name, which might be a combination of letters, numbers or phrases.  An excellent domain name is going to be short, memorable and most importantly, search-engine friendly.  In fact, great webmasters tend to concentrate more on a domain name’s effectiveness with SEO, (or Search Engine Optimization), than they do its creativity.  To do this they make certain to pick a domain name that has a widely searched keyword.  

The final portion of the domain name has what is known as an extension.  This lets a person know a little bit a lot more about a website’s origins.  For instance, take .com, probably the most typical domain name extension.  It stands for ‘commercial’, and was originally intended for organizations in that vein.  Nevertheless, now the extension is employed by virtually any person looking to create a website.  And this is for very good reason, since most web surfers will think about the .com just before they would believe about .org, .biz or .net.  Yet, don’t believe the other extensions can’t turn out to be memorable either.  Contemplate Wikipedia.org which can be a wildly well-known website despite its .org extension.

Domain name extensions can also specify issues on a geographical level.  An example are country-based extensions such as .fr, (which stands for France), or .jp, (which stands for Japan).  They can also be state-based, such as .ca, (which stands for California).  Both can serve as excellent tools for localized Web advertising.

To get a domain name, an individual can either: 1) get 1 from their web hosting firm, provided they supply that service or 2) get 1 from a separate domain name firm.  Price-wise issues will vary with both choices, though typically the cost will range from $6.50 to $35.