When starting to create their website, every owner thinks about what to call it or, in other words, get a domain name. A well-chosen name for an online project strengthens the brand’s reputation and helps the audience find the web resource. Whether users will remember it depends on this. In this article, we will discuss what a domain is, learn how to get one, and consider examples of different types of names for a website.
What is a domain – definition
A domain name is, in simple terms, a link between a user and the site they want to visit. Such a system greatly simplifies the entire process. The actual addresses of the web resources we visit are complex combinations of numbers called IP addresses. They indicate the location of the server where the site is hosted and are easily recognized by a computer. Examples include: 135.144.247.113; 157.240.14.35; 66.211.172.37. Our site elit-web.ua has an IP address of 185.68.16.19.
Just look at these numbers and you’ll immediately understand how difficult it would be to remember the actual addresses of the web resources you frequently visit if there were no “human-readable” names. Fortunately, they do exist, which means you can simply type the domain name of the site you want to visit into your browser, and the system will automatically match your request with the IP address in milliseconds and open the desired page.
a domain and hosting?
Domain and hosting are two different things, but equally important for creating a web resource. A domain name is a digital identifier of a site that allows Internet users to easily access the information posted on the project pages. While hosting stores its data. In fact, this is the place where all the data is saved.
You can purchase a domain name and hosting account from different providers or stick with one company.
What parts does a domain name consist of?
A domain name can have at least two levels, separated by periods. These parts are arranged in a hierarchical order from right to left: third level, second, first. This domain name system (DNS) allows the browser to quickly find the right server and site that matches the request.
Level one
This is the part of the name that is displayed in the browser line on the right and represents the highest level in the hierarchy. It is also called a top-level domain (TLD), domain zone or domain ending. A TLD can be generic (e.g. .com, .org, .net) or national (e.g. .ua, .uk, .fr).
You can’t come up with such an ending yourself. When registering, the zone is selected from the addresses available on the Internet Administration website (IANA), where the fulllisttop-level domains.
The registration process and management of the common database of names is carried out by the ICANN organization.
Level two
The second-level domain is a freely chosen mobile game development name located to the left of the domain ending. For this reason, this component is also called the domain name itself. Although it is located below the TLD in the hierarchy, it should in no way be considered less important than the ending. In reality, the opposite is true: the domain name is much more important from both the user’s point of view and from an SEO perspective, since it can better describe the site’s content and even contain keywords.
In our example www.elit-web.ua the second level domain displays the name of our agency Elit-Web.
Level three
Optionally, the site domain can contain another level, which is also called a subdomain. Its function is to structure the content of the web resource. In this way, you can clearly indicate in the address the various subsections of the site structure, for example, a blog, while the name remains unchanged.
The well-known www designation is also you need the best business considered a subdomain. At the dawn of the Internet, this indicated to users that they were dealing with an information site. However, today this combination is almost never used for entering into the address bar.
On sites that have several language versions and are intended for promotion in different countries, you can find subdomains that indicate the language version of the web resource, for example:
- en.example.org (to indicate English-lkind of usa lists guaranteeanguage content);
- es.example.org (Spanish);
- it.example.org (Italian);
- de.example.org (German).
In principle, the number of levels of an online project address is not limited. However, to make it easy to remember, three of them are usually enough.