How Will You Describe a Domain Name?
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What is a Domain Name? Imagine that everybody in the world used their telephone number instead of their name...If names didn't exist, you'd be forced to invent them, or you'd never be able to identify your closest friends, let alone casual acquaintances you'd met only a couple of times!
Domain names were invented to fill a similar need on the Internet. Most computers connected to the Internet are identified by a unique number called an IP address (for instance, 234.208.12.129). IP addresses are neither intuitive (they don't correspond to a geographical location) nor easy to remember.
If you type the IP address into the URL bar of your browser you will be taken to the web site it relates to. As well as being hard to remember, however, IP addresses are also FIXED (i.e. if you change web hosting companies you'll need to get a new IP address for your site).
Domain names offer a more intuitive way to name and find a website. Each domain name replaces a string of meaningless numbers (an IP address) with a simple word or expression. That's the theory - in practice, domain names can be pretty obscure too. A domain name is the label used to identify the Web site, for example "http://www.qualitylinkbuilding.com" It usually describes some aspect of the site and is easier for the visitors to remember than the Web address, also known as the IP address.
.com is the top domain under which the other domain name is registered. There are heaps of different top domains out there, from commercial (.com) through to non-profit (.org) and even country-specific top domains such as France (.fr) and Italy (.it).
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