Tech in Plain English: Domain Names

Introduction

Over the last 2 weeks we have used this series to introduce you to the basic elements of web hosting by comparing it to the example of finding a house. We explained how the disk space in your hosting package is similar to finding the size and shape of home while the bandwidth can be compared to make sure our driveway is big enough for all our visitors. The next Tech in Plain English will now extend this to look at domain names.

If we stick with our houses example then your domain name is quite simply your address on the Web. Just as we have a standard way of writing an address so we have a standard way of writing domain names. If we think about an address like this:

1 Simple Street

Exampletown

Some County

EG1 1EG, UK

We can easily identify the county of the address (Some County), the town where we live (Exampletown), the street we are on (Simple Street) and finally the number of our house. Likewise if we consider a web address like this:

bbc.co.uk

… then we can see the county of the domain (uk), the type of website it is (co or company) and the company in question (BBC).

What’s in a name?

Every domain name is made up of a number of parts to help us understand and organise the web.   In the case of domain names perhaps the best way of reading them is right to left. So just as we did with the BBC site, we first looked at the right-most chunk (uk), then the next along (co), and so on. This first chunk is called the top-level domain and is the first most important step in categorising our domain name. There are two types of top-level domain, those that identify a country (we’ve already seen uk for example), and a set of generic domains that identify the service such as .gov[ernment], .edu[cation], .com[mercial], .mil[itary], .org[anisations], etc. Originally this list was quite limited, 7 in total, but this number has crept up as the Web has grown and there are currently 21 in circulation with many more on the horizon. Below the top-level domain we can also have a second level (co in our case), a third level, and in fact as many of these as we want.

There is no hard and fast rule to choosing a domain name.  It is always a good idea to get a domain name that in some way identifies your company, the service offered and/or perhaps the country you’re in. This will make it much easier for visitors to first remember your address and second find your site on the web.

So how do we get ourselves a domain name?

There are domain name providers that can supply you with a domain name.  The key thing to remember is that domain names are unique.  Just like no two houses can have the same address no two websites can have the same domain name.     The first thing you will need to do is to check and see if your proposed name is available.  Most domain name providers check the availability before completing the purchase and will even suggest an alternative should your first choice be taken.  You can also use sites like  Whois Lookup to help find out whether a domain name has already been registered.

Once you are happy with the name, you can select it and buy it, usually for a period of one or two years. That means that you have to keep renewing your domain name or else it will eventually get released and potentially taken by someone else!

The next stage is to make sure that the servers where your site is hosted is ‘communicating’ with the domain name.  A good web hosting service will do this for you and then your site will be ready for the world to see. 

To wrap up

So to summarise what we’ve talked about today:

• We have looked at domain names, what they are and how they work
• We’ve looked at the different types of domain out there, how people choose them and why
• We given a summary of how you can get a domain name, the basic steps to go through, and how this all relates back to your web hosting.

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