What is Domain name?
Simply put Domain names are words used to find one or multiple IP addresses. As we know a DNS server is used to resolve the name to an IP addresses. Domain name is the bunch of characters DNS translates into an IP addresses and gives back to the browser. There is a common body looking after all the domain names called ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers)
Why we use Domain?
A Domain name helps us to remember the name of the website instead of the server. Because of Domain name, we can visit it any server we want using just a some words!
There are various levels of domains. We use a ‘.’ to separate these levels.
- Top Level Domains (TLD).
– These commonly known as TLDs are of types ‘.com , .edu , .net , .org’.
– TLDs are also assigned company wise, each company having its TLD per its name.
– For India it is ‘.in‘ , for United Kingdom it is ‘.uk‘ ,for United States of America it is ‘.us‘ - Mid-level Domains.
– The word before TLD (‘.com , .net‘) and after ‘www‘ is called the mid level domain.
– In ‘www.facebook.com ‘.com‘ is the TLD and Facebook is the mid level domain. You can choose any Mid-level domain provided its available and no one has already registered it! - Second-level domain.
– The domain which is before the TLD and after Mid level domain is Second level domain.
– Let us consider few examples for this ‘www.irctc.co.in’, ‘www.dell.co.in’ and ‘www.google.co.in‘.
– Here in the above examples, ‘irctc’, ‘dell’, ‘google’ are the Midlevel domain, where as ‘co‘ is the Second level domain and ‘.in‘ is the top-level domain. - Sub domain.
– When we create a part of the existing domain we call it as subdomain.
– A subdomain is added before the Mid level domain.
– Say you want to build a movies website. So you will buy a domain name ‘www.movie.com‘ from a registrar.
– Now you want to display Hollywood and Bollywood movies separately. Here you can create a subdomain named ‘Hollywood‘ and ‘Bollywood‘.
– All Hollywood movies will have the address ‘hollywood.movie.com‘ followed by their names whereas all Bollywood will have ‘bollywood.movie.com‘ followed by their name.
You can buy domain names from various websites like Godaddy, Bigrock, Register, Network Solutions, Name.com. These are also called Domain Name Registrars. The price of each domain varies according to its name and Top level domain. For example ‘.com‘ is costly than ‘.co‘ or ‘.net‘ or ‘.in‘.
A Domain name without hosting is as useless as a Number plate without Vehicle. Like a vehicle is recognized from its number plate, a website is recognized by its domain name.
If you buy a domain, you’re just registering it to your name. To actually build a website with that name, you need hosting services. To know more about hosting check this post.
Domain + hosting