What Is a Domain Name & How Does It Work?

Every computer has a different IP address, like a telephone number. For instance, every person uses different telephone numbers worldwide, and if you want to reach your friend, you need to dial his/her exact telephone number. As in the example, IP address, or a set of numbers like 77.245.159.2, is a service that each computer uses to communicate with each other on a network. A domain name is something that distinguishes your website from the others.

Let’s get back to the example. You have many friends and family members, so each one has a telephone number on your phone. Thus, is there a long list of contacts, right? When you want to call someone, you generally look at the telephone book rather than typing one by one. Domain names are like a telephone book. When you want to look for a website on the internet, you type the domain name rather than the IP address. We can say that each name is connected to a different IP address. The short description of the domain name is the address that people type into the browser URL bar to access your website. For instance, ‘ instagram.com’ or ‘twitter.com.’

What Is the Difference Between a Website and a Domain?

A website is a collection of web pages on the internet with a specific domain name. On the other side, when users wish to access your website, they have to type your domain name into the browser URL.

What Are the Different Types of Domain Names?

Here are three different parts for the domain names;

1- Subdomain: Subdomain is the first part of a domain name before the dot. For instance, the ‘www’ part is the subdomain on ‘www.example.com’ However, it is a standard part of each domain and optional. So, you don’t need to type ‘www’ before the domain into a browser to access the website.

2- Second Level Domain: It is the main part of the name, between the dots. For example, ‘example’ is the second level domain on ‘www.example.com’ Besides, you can customize as you wish whenever you want.

3- Top Level Domain: It is the last part of the domain name and the domain extension. For example, ‘com’ is the top-level domain on ‘www.example.com’ Also, it can be ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’, ‘.edu’, ‘.mil’ or ‘.gov’. However, the most commonly known and used is ‘.com.’

Conclusion

Each website has a different and unique domain name, such as telephone numbers. When you want to access a specific website, like Twitter, you need to type its domain into the browser URL bar. In this case, it is ‘twitter.com.’ However, it consists of 3 different parts: a subdomain, second-level, and top-level. If you want to learn how to change a domain name, please read our article about it.

FAQs About the Domain Name