Domain Rentals

What Is A Domain

People who are new to the internet may have several questions. The first of these may be what is a domain? This article will answer that question while also defining some other basic internet terms that you will encounter as you surf the web.

The answer to what is a domain is that it is an address for a website. Domains consist of several parts, which are divided by dots. The part of the name farthest to the left is the machine name, and the most common machine name is www. The next part of the domain is the midlevel domain, which is found in the middle of the address. Finally, the parent domain is on the farthest left of the domain name. For example, in the address www.jrwhale.blogspot.com, blogspot is the parent while jrwhale is the midlevel. Within the parent domain, there may be several different midlevel domains.

To point to a more specific section of a webpage, internet users will use something called URLs. These use a series of words combined with dashes and dots to indicate the specific page address and folder name. For example, the URL httpparenting.blogs.nytimes.com20110616let-my-parents-marry points to a specific section of the parent domain nytimes.com. All of these web addresses mask something called the IP address or internet protocol address. That address is a series of four numbers differentiated by dots, and every machine that is connected to the internet including cell phones and computers has its own unique IP address.

However, in order to have a webpage, internet users need to find a hosting service. Hosting is how a company allows an internet user to set up a page on their server. There are various kinds of hosting. Some like blogspot.com, which is mentioned above are free while others require their users to pay a fee. Regardless of where the page is hosted, web pages are typically written in a language called HTML that stands for hypertext markup language. To see an example of HTML, you can right click and select view page source on almost any webpage. Then you will see a code that starts with the letters html.

As you can see, the answer to what is a domain is relatively straightforward. However, as you dive further into your internet research, you may come across more new and unfamiliar terms. These terms are not insurmountable and will be easily learned as you continue your research.