The first thing that comes to my mind when a (business) idea kicks in is to brainstorm a brand name and register it as a domain name as soon as possible.
And I know that’s the same for every business owner or entrepreneur. But what is a domain name and why do we need it at all?
To answer this question, especially for non-technical people, I will use a simple concept you are already familiar with, which is a house. I am also going to use this same analogy in my next post explaining what “web hosting” means. So let’s talk about domain names.
What is a domain name?
A domain name (or simply Domain) is a “readable” character entered into search engines’ URL bar to locate your website on the internet.
An example of a domain name is stephengade.com
Whenever stephengade.com is entered into a browser’s address bar, you’re going to land on this website, no two people can own the same domain name with the same domain extension.
We will talk about domain extension later in this post.
How does a domain name work?
A domain name is like a house address.
Imagine you just built a house somewhere in a developing area of your city and your friends want to visit you one day, then you said to them, “Just come to this city and you’ll see my house there”.
That’s not specific enough because there are probably hundreds of houses in that city.
But if you tell your friend, once you enter the city, go to No 39, Mayfair Street.
Oh, that’s more specific and it’ll be easier for your friends to get to your place.
There are millions of websites in the world and right now, ten thousand websites will be launched, a readable website address will help your visitors get to your place without missing their road.
Domain name vs Website IP Address
Whenever you create a new website, an IP address is automatically assigned to it. This IP address is a unique but random number that can be used to locate your website.
- A typical IP address looks like: `192.168.0.1` or
- `2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334`
I will talk about IP addresses in a separate article, but look at the two random characters above, will it be easy for you to always remember?
If yes, what about your visitors?
Nobody is ready to memorize such random strings.
That’s where a domain name comes in.
You can buy a simple (easy-to-remember) domain name and map it to your website, and you don’t need to remember any IP address again.
Whenever anyone enters the domain name in the browser URL, your device will send a request to the address book of all domain names (called Domain Name System, DNS). The DNS resolves the name to the exact IP address of the website and finally makes a connection to the server, then your website is shown and can be interacted with.
So your website IP address is the real identifier for your website but the domain name is like the virtual address.
It is possible to change the domain name of a website but you change your website IP Address unless you delete your website and start all over again, you can also hide the IP address in case you don’t want anyone to know about it.
What is a domain name extension?
Domain name extension is the character that comes immediately after your domain name in a URL, it is in the form of dot-something
For instance, in www.stephengade.com, the domain name extension here is “.com”
Whenever you’re buying a domain name, what you are actually buying is the extension because, of course, you brainstorm your brand name yourself and then go to the domain name registrar to sell a domain extension for the brand name to you.
There are about 1,600 domain name extensions in the world with more to be added, but the most popular among them is the dot-com (.com)
Check here on domain.com for a list of some common domain name extensions.
PRO TIP: Domain name extensions are very important when it is your niche and branding, so choose wisely.
Dot-com (.com) is the best domain name extension, it can be used for any niche but dot-edu (.edu) is specific for education, same as .ai for artificial intelligence.
If you’re in a startup ecosystem, there are chances that dot-com for your brand name may not be available or too expensive, then the next best option is dot-co (.co)
That’s what some startup founders do, and what we did at vendda.co
Difference between domain name and URL.
We now understand what a domain name is, but what is a URL?
Acronym for Uniform Resource Locator, URL tells the server the exact location or path the web page you are trying to access is located.
Remember a domain name is just a virtual address to locate your website but the URL tells the server that your visitor is trying to access the “About” page or trying to download a picture etc.
- A typical URL is like this “https://www.stephengade.com/blog/what-is-domain-name”
- While the domain name is just “stephengade.com”
Now that we are here, let’s dissect the components of a web address (URL)
In https://www.stephengade.com/blog/what-is-domain-name?id=1#about
- https is the transfer protocol to communicate with the SERVER
- www is the subdomain, which in this case leads to the main website, and you decide to ignore it
- stephengade is your brand or second-level domain
- .com is the domain name extension or the top-level domain
- /blog is subdirectory (like a folder in your website)
- /what-is-domain-name is the exact path of the resource we are trying to locate
- ?id=1 is the search params
- #about is the anchor ID to navigate to a particular section on a webpage
Why do you need a domain name?
Some companies spend millions of dollars to acquire a domain name for their brand, an example is chat.com which is acquired for over $15m. For small-scale business owners, they spend roughly $14 each year for a domain name.
Whereas your website IP address comes free of charge in fact, if you use website builders like WordPress.com, shopify.com, etc., they’ll give you a readable subdomain name for free.
But yet the domain name business is worth billions of dollars. The reason is because a domain name is not just a virtual name but part of your business.
To summarize:
- A domain name helps you build credibility on the internet. For instance, people will trust yourname.com over yourname.wordpress.com
- Domain names are easier to remember. Anyone in the world knows google.com but few people know their IP address
- A domain name helps you build brand authority.
Where to buy a domain name?
There are many companies in the business of selling domain names. You can check them online but the popular ones are:
- Godaddy.com
- Namecheap.com
- Namesilo.com
- Hostinger.com
- Bluehost.com
- Domain.com
- ionos.com
- Name.com
- One.com
And many more. Of all these, I have been using namecheap.com for all my domain names for more than 7 years and the experience has been very good.
This is just a beginner guide and I hope you understand the concept of domain name now.
Next, I will talk about web hosting, subscribe to my email list to be notified when it’s published.
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