Initial word of warning: they aren’t. Really they aren’t. Domain names are not really as much of a “sex symbol” as GoDaddy.com wants you to think. But apparently they do think they can make domain names appeal to a larger audience by using their “abnormal” advertising tactics. Anyway, I’m not here to explain their racy ads. I’m here to explain what their ads are about: domain names. What are they and how do you get one? Let’s read on, shall we?

DOMAIN NAMES
Let’s get the basics out of the way: What is a domain name?

http://www.somedomainname.com

Ta-da! You use it every day on the Internet but you may have not known what it was actually called. It goes by a few different terms, some may be more familiar than others:

- Domain Name
- Website Address
- URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

A domain name is to a website what your address is to your house. It tells a user or visitor where your site (house) is located. I know I used the house address analogy in the “IP Myself” article when referring to your IP address as your house address. They are both valid, it’s just the easiest way to explain it in both cases as it applies to the topic at hand.

Another way to explain a domain name (so it’s not related to my other article) is think of it as an address or name of a location that you want to type into Google Maps. For this example, “domainname.com” is equal to “123 Main Street, New York, NY”. When I type the domain (address) into my browser (Google Maps), it uses that information to look up your request and returns what it finds to your browser (updated Google Map with pin in the location of the address).

But what do all those pieces of the domain name mean? Well, I’ll do my best to explain:

http:// – Computers talk to each other through a series of what’s called protocols. I’ll leave it at that, but if you want to learn more, look up protocols on Wikipedia. HTTP is the protocol for websites. Think of it as the stamp on the envelope you’re about to mail. No matter what, you can’t send that piece of mail without a stamp. You can’t access that website without the HTTP protocol.

www – This is what’s called a subdomain. Again, I won’t get into details but it used to be more prominently used in web addresses. These days most websites are setup to where this is optional, so you can use either “http://www.domainname.com” or “http://domainname.com”. It’s a subdomain of “somedomainname”.

somedomainname – This is what’s called a second-level domain. This is usually the unique name that identifies who the whole domain name is for or belongs to. “jabloggy” is the second-level domain for “www.jabloggy.com”.

.com – This last piece is known as the top-level domain. If you read this section of the article backwards, you’ll notice that domain names aren’t really written left to right. They are setup right to left (subdomain.second-level.top-level). Goofy, I know, but again I don’t want to get into too many details until you understand these basic ideas.

That’s about as plain English as I can get it. There’s a lot more I could ramble on about, but it’s probably going to be confusing and, really, who the heck needs that??!

DOMAIN REGISTRARS
I also want to briefly cover the topic of domain registrars so you understand that a little too. A domain registrar is a company that offers the service of purchasing and owning (hosting) a domain name. GoDaddy.com is an example of a domain registrar. Using Jabloggy.com as an example, I purchased that domain from GoDaddy.com. They give me an account on their site where I can go and configure and administer the settings and preferences for that domain. Simple as pie! (at least in this brief description it sounds simple as pie, or so I hope!)

For more details about domain names, check out the definition for Domain Name on Wikipedia..

For more information about top-level domains, check out the definition for Top-level Domains on Wikipedia.

For more information about domain registrars, check out the definition for Domain Name Registrar on Wikipedia.

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Tags: Domains, Registrars

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 2:16 am and is filed under Web Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.