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What is a Domain Name

What is a Domain Name?

What is a domain name? A domain name is a human-readable word used to identify a website on the internet. It’s the address of your website that people type into the URL or search bar of their web browser.

Domain Name Example:

tarttweb.com

The internet in its entirety is essentially just a massive community of computers connected through cables, called a network.

To identify each of the computers, they are assigned a numerical label called an IP Address. An IP Address is a combination of letters and numbers separated by dots and colons.

At the time of this article, there are two main versions of IP addresses used. Below are some examples of the two versions and how they look.

IP Address Examples:

  • IPv4: 197.228.0.15 (Version 4)
  • IPv6: FE80:0000:0000:0000:0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329 (Version 6)

As you can see, IP Addresses are complicated and very difficult for humans to remember and use to connect to websites.

On the other hand, computers are designed to calculate numbers and have no problem identifying and remembering them.

For this reason, domain names were created to give humans a way to remember website addresses by using human-readable words that are easy to remember.

Now, if you want to visit your favorite website, it’s as simple as typing an easy-to-remember word into your web browser’s URL or search bar.

Additionally, once a domain name is registered, it is being leased from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for providing domains to approved registrars.

Domain Names can be purchased through an authorized registrar such as DreamHost, NameCheap.com, Domain.com or one of the many other resellers.

Many WordPress hosting providers such as DreamHost will provide one free domain registration for the first year.

Domain Names also have different extensions available. Some of the most popular ones are .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .biz. There are also numerous country level domain extensions such as .us, .ca, .au, .in, .io, and countless others.

Domain Name locations can be changed from one web host to another by changing its DNS settings. DNS settings tell the DNS servers which IP Address corresponds to a specific Domain Name. When you change web hosts your IP Address will change because you are changing servers.

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