What Is A Domain Name

You may have heard the term “Domain Name” before and had no clue as to what it is. Well, knowing this is a must in today digital world. This article will explain what a Domain Name is as well as provide additional information about the extension of a domain such as .com because it is very important to understand.

Quick answer

A Domain Name is an address that internet users can use to access a website such as “www.domainname.com”

Quick explanation

Every house has an address right? Well, every website has an address and that address is the domain name.

More Info

The Domain Name for our company is “pixelcomb.com”. But this can be wrapped inside something that looks like this: http://johnf131.sg-host.com

What is the “https”, “www” and the “.com”? This article is only talking about domain names and the extensions like .com, however, we will provide links to our other articles to learn about the https and www.

How domain names are communicated to people

It is very common to hear people say “my website address is _________”. When they say it, they will usually tell you the domain name in the following two manners.

websiteaddress.com  -OR- www.websiteaddress.com

Notice one has no “www” and the other does.

Does it matter how a domain name is given or said?

The answer is yes, but with exception to the “www”. This part does not need to be communicated as they will both go to the same website.

The most important thing to communicate is the domain extension which is the .com, .net, or .org. This is because when a domain is registered, it is done with a specific extension. Therefore anyone registers a domain such as mywebsite.net but tells someone to visit their website mywebsite.com, the website will not load. It will only load when used with the extension .net that was purchased.

What is a domain extension?

We are briefly explaining what an extension like .com, .net, and .org are because it is extremely relative to the domain name. 

A domain extension is also known as a Top-Level Domain (TLD) or TLD’s for plural. 

Every domain that is registered is done so with an extension. This means the person who is registering has to select what extensions they want. 

This means you can purchase/register a domain name such as luresolutions.com as well as luresolutions.net. There are multiple reasons why it is good to purchase/register a few extensions of a domain name. The most common reason is so that nobody tries to pretend to be the domain you purchased/registered.

Most common domain extensions / TLD’s

The most common type of domain is the .com extension. This is truly a TLD and educationally argued as to being the most important domain extension to have. 

There are now hundreds of domain extensions available such as .solutions and .info. However, the most recognized domain extensions next to the .com, are the .net, .org and .gov  

Are domain names necessary?

We decided to add quick topic in this article because we know there are people who don’t want to pay for a domain name.  

The quick answer to this is NO. It is not necessary if you don’t use professional website platform like WordPress or Magento. Professional platforms will require you to have a domain name. 

If you don’t want to pay for a domain name then you will have to create a website with a Do It Yourself (DIY) type of website builder such as Wix. Please keep in mind that this is not a professional website and we don’t recommend it because you would have to create a “sub domain”. This basically means your website name will have the “wix.com in it. Example: businessname.wix.com  This is not very good image, and ultimately the DIY website like Wix will own your content. 

Summary on domain names

A domain name is an address for a website. It also serves in SEO which is part of marketing and costs between $13-19 per year. 

CLICK HERE TO READ OUR ARTICLE ON HOW TO PURCHASE AND REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME.