What is domain in website

Setting up your business online helps you reach a larger audience and expand your brand beyond brick and mortar.

When you start laying down the foundation of your online presence, it helps to know the differences between your building materials. This helps you make more informed decisions about what’s right for your brand and helps you talk with experts to get the help you need.

Find out the essential differences between domain names, URLs, and websites to start laying down the first steps that brings your idea to life.

Domain.com has over 300 domain extensions to choose from to help set your website apart from the rest. It all starts with a great domain.

What is a domain name?

In the vast world of the internet, a domain name plants a stake in the ground for your business so your target audience can more easily find you. The domain is your address online, and the name that customers type in when they want to find your business. It’s the ‘Domain.com’ in the URL in the address bar at the top of this page.

Domain names were created as a stand-in for a website’s Internet Protocol, or IP address, which is simply a unique series of numbers identifying the specific computer server where the website is hosted. It’s much simpler to remember a name than a string of random numbers, and it looks much better on a t-shirt.

What is a URL?

The address bar at the top of a web page, commonly called a URL, is the universal resource locator. This includes all of the information your computer needs to find the right page, image, or document on a website. Your domain name is included in the URL, but a domain is not the same thing as a URL. Simply put, a URL is the whole string of characters, creating a map that leads your computer where you want to go online.

The example above is a URL, a computer would start reading the letters .COM, also called a top-level domain (TLD). Then, it would move left to include the domain name, Domain.com to find the right website. Once it locates the servers where the website is hosted, it checks the characters after the TLD, in this case, the ‘/domains/’ in order to locate the right web page to display.

The ‘https://’ stands for Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol. A protocol is a command that tells your computer to read the following information as hypertext, which is a structured language that uses logical links, called hyperlinks, between different nodes on the web page that contain text.

A website is where your business lives online

Your domain is your address online and a URL leads people to your front door, but your website is the actual house where your business lives. While the tools for building your website vary, whatever you build needs to be pointed to your domain, so the links between them can connect.

The difference is important, and not just to web experts

Knowing how your domain name, the URL and your website all work together to drive traffic for your business is like knowing the basics of the systems in your house, like how to check a fuse. If anything dire occurs, you can lean on the help of professionals, but knowing the basics helps you explain issues to an expert, or fix minor issues yourself to get back to business more quickly.

If your website is not properly displaying on your domain, the most likely reason is an improperly mapped to the right Domain Name Server (DNS), which means your domain and website aren’t properly synced and can’t talk to each other. Check to make sure your domain is accurately pointed to your website through both your registrar account and your website provider. If the website is still not showing, customer support should be able to get you back online.

Secure your business online with all the right tools

Building an audience that sustains your new business idea requires a secure foundation online. Knowing the differences between a domain name, a URL, and a website not only helps you better run your business, but it also gives you more control when deciding what’s right for your brand.

Domain.com has over 300 domain extensions to choose from to help set your website apart from the rest. It all starts with a great domain.  

One of the first and most essential steps for any company’s digital marketing campaign is to create a website. Your website acts as the central hub for your marketing efforts since it acts as your online storefront. But the process of creating a website has several steps, and one of the very first involves purchasing a domain.

That’s no small thing, either, as the domain itself can play a role in the effectiveness of your marketing.

What is a website domain, though? While you may have heard the term before, you might not have any real knowledge of what it means. Don’t worry, though — on this page, we’ll look at what domains are, how they work, and how to get a website domain.

Read on to learn more, and then subscribe to Revenue Weekly for more information from the digital marketing agency with over 1,020 client testimonials!

What are domains, URLs, and websites?

Something you may be asking yourself is, “What is a domain name?” It’s a word we often hear thrown around in relation to websites, but we don’t often know exactly what the word entails. In fact, it can be easy to assume that a domain is something it’s not, like a URL or a website. For that reason, one of the best ways to understand domains is to look at them in comparison to those two things.

Below, we’ll talk about each one.

What is a website domain?

To put it simply, a domain is the name of a website. Websites can be identified with IP addresses, but those aren’t convenient for humans to remember, so domains are used to make it easier to keep track of website names. An example of what a domain name looks like is walmart.com. The equivalent for a physical store would be the store name.

What is a website URL?

While domains only consist of the website’s name, URLs provide the address for each individual page.

Domains are included in URLs, but they aren’t the same thing. URLs consist of the full line of text that you see in the address bar when you visit a website.

The domain “walmart.com” is part of it, but it also includes additional information to direct the browser to the order-tracking page specifically. If the physical store equivalent of a domain is the store name, the URL is the store’s street address.

What is a website?

A domain is the name of a website, and a URL is the address that tells browsers how to get to a website. Neither is a website, though.

A website is made up of the actual pages, graphics, text, and everything else users see and interact with on your screen. The physical equivalent in the example we’ve been using would be the actual, physical Walmart building, with all the shelves and products inside.

Components of a website domain

Website domains consist of two primary components: The name and the extension. We can look at this by returning to the example of walmart.com.

In that example, “walmart” is the name, while “.com” is the extension. The name component of a domain can be almost anything, provided it hasn’t already been taken. Essentially any combination of letters and numbers would work.

Preferably, though, the name is that of your company. The extension, meanwhile, has a more limited selection of options. The most common one, by far, is “.com.” Other possibilities are “.gov,” “.org,” and “.net,” among plenty of other options.

In all likelihood, your site is best off using “.com.”

The purpose of a website domain

One question you may still have is, “What is a website domain’s purpose?” The purpose of a domain is to put a simple, recognizable name to a website. It serves as a name that users and browsers alike can make sense of. Without domains, websites would be known by their IP addresses, which appear as strings of numbers.

An example IP address would be 256.185.138.91. That isn’t very convenient to try remembering. Walmart.com, on the other hand, is much more easily recognizable.

In a word, then, the purpose of a website domain is convenience.

How to get a website domain

We started by asking, “What does domain mean?” Having answered that, as well as having seen the purpose of a website domain, we can now look at how to get your own website domain and use to it create a website.

Domain name registrars

To buy your domain, you have to go to a domain name registrar, such as Domain.com or Bluehost. These registrars are authorized to sell domains that haven’t yet been taken. Start your search with an idea of the domain name you want.

Ideally, you want to keep it simple. If your business is called Gareth Plumbing, try garethplumbing.com, or maybe even gareth.com.

Don’t get too attached to any specific name, though, as it may not turn out to be available. The registrar should be able to tell you whether the domain you want is available. If it is, you can register it for your company.

If not, you’ll have to come up with something else to use or offer to purchase the domain — before making a purchase, use a domain valuation tool to get an accurate estimate.

Site-building

Once you have a domain, you can go about building your website. This is the fun part! It’s like creating your physical store after signing the deed on the land.

Whether you go it alone or get help from a web development agency like WebFX, design a site that will engage users.

Website hosting

Your site may be finished, but that doesn’t mean you’re done. There’s still one more step before you can get things rolling. That’s because there’s a significant difference between a physical store and a website: A website has to be digitally accessible across the globe.

For this to happen, your site needs to be physically stored on a server somewhere. It also has to be stored in such a way that the site data can be rapidly carried to any computer where the site is visited. For that, you need to rent space from a web host.

While you can register your domain with one registrar and rent from a web host separately, many registrars offer both domain registration and web hosting services, offering you the convenient option to do both in one place.

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Get help building your website from WebFX

Struggling to figure out all the ins and outs of the site-building process? Whether you’re hung up on the design elements of your site or simply still asking “What is a website domain?”, WebFX can help you get it all straightened out.

We’ve been working in web design for over 25 years, and the experience has lent us more than enough knowledge and dedication to make your company’s site the best that it can be. We’ll work with you every step of the way, from registering your domain to designing your pages. To get started with us, just give us a call at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!