What Is The Function Of Domain Name
and
How It Differs From Web Hosting?
and
How It Differs From Web Hosting?
Many people who do not have the knowledge of programming or experience with website creation, often ask the question what is the domain name and why we need that? Many of the beginner website designers interchangeably use the two terms domain name and hosting, but those two words are absolutely different.
Domain name is the address that your website viewers would type in the browser to access your page. To explain it in simple words, imagine that the website that you own is your house and domain in this case would be the street address of that house. Therefore, it is logical that you will need the domain name to avoid the confusion of website viewers.
Internet is a huge space and network of zillions of computers that are connected to each other through a global chain of cables. To differentiate computers from each other, an IP address is given to each one of them which is the combination of numbers.
However, the IP addresses are difficult to recall and therefore the Domain Names were created because they are more simple to use and remember. Now, instead of remembering and typing different number combinations we are using the words that are associated to the websites that we would like to visit for instance www.gridgum.com .
Many of you would ask a question, but what exactly happens when we type in the domain name? Well, the browser sends a request to global chain of servers that shape the Domain Name System. Afterwards, these servers search for the name servers that are connected to a domain and transfer the request to those name servers.
These names servers are actually computers that are owned and monitored by your website hosting company. And therefore, your company will forward the request to the computer where your website is kept. The computer that was mentioned above is actually a web server which has a special server installed in it like Apache or Nginx.
Now you would have another question arising, what’s the difference between Domain Name and website hosting? Well, as it was mentioned above the domain name is your house address and web hosting is a house where your website inhabits. That is a place where your website data and files are kept and these “places” (servers) are suggested as a service by various companies.
Even thought Domain Name and web hosting and two different things, you still need both to launch a website. Because of this reason, we suggest you to have both, Domain Name and web hosting, from the same company because you will manage settings easier by using only one account. But of course if you decide to choose two different companies, then you just have to alter the name settings and enter the Name Server information provided by the hosting company.
The domain names are available in various extensions but the most frequently used one is .com. However, there are many other options, like .net, .org, .info and many more. There are some country domain names as well for instance in Germany all of the websites are using .de and in United Kingdom .uk and etc. However, we recommend to use .com since it is very popular all around the world and is easier to remember.
But how to acquire the domain name? You can purchase them from various companies! Generally, these companies are regarded as name registers. And normally, the domain name costs approximately 15 dollars on annual basis. One of the most popular name register companies are:
As it was mentioned above, the domain name does not give the web hosting and for that you need separate account and service company. And for that reason we recommend you either On Linux based hosting company that offers domain name and web hosting services simultaneously or the m9Host.com that offers the same services. However, working with M9Host can be money efficient because they offer different price packages and the price range starts from 0.99 dollars. M9Host also differs from other companies because it helps you to find multiple available domain names. You just have to enter the names that you would like to have and choose the extensions and it will automatically check the availability of domain names. The ones with green dots are available and the ones with red dots are already occupied, see the image below:
http://m9host.com/domains/
We hope that after reading this article, you will have better idea what is domain name, why it is needed and how to acquire one.
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