What is a domain name?

  • The address, not the site itself
  • Rented yearly, never bought outright
  • Moves with you between hosts

Your address on the internet, and what it is not

A domain name is the address people type to reach your website - elyspace.com, for instance. It is not the website and it is not the hosting, and the difference between those three is the thing most explanations skip.

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Domain, hosting and website are three different things

Confusing them is the single most common source of trouble when something breaks.

The three parts, and what each one is

The domain is the address

It is what somebody types. You rent it yearly from a registrar, and it points wherever you tell it to point.

The hosting is the land

A server where the files live. Without hosting the address leads nowhere; without the address people have to know the server's IP.

The website is the building

The pages, images and code that sit on the hosting. You can rebuild it entirely and keep the same address.

They can come from different places

Your domain can be registered with one company and your hosting bought from another. Keeping them together is simpler, but nothing requires it.

The parts of a domain name

Reading elyspace.com from right to left.

What each part means

The extension (.com)

Also called the TLD. Some are open to anybody, some are tied to a country like .in or .uk, and some have eligibility rules. It affects trust more than it affects ranking.

The name (elyspace)

The part you choose. It has to be unique within that extension, which is why the same name can exist on .com and .in as different owners.

The subdomain (www, blog)

A division of a domain you already own. You create them yourself at no extra cost - blog.yoursite.com needs no second registration.

Nameservers

The setting that says which hosting the domain points at. Changing host means changing this, and it is why a move takes a few hours to propagate.

Domain names: common questions

A domain name is the address people type to reach a website, such as elyspace.com. It is not the website itself and not the hosting the website sits on - it is the human-readable label that points at them. Domains are rented from a registrar on an annual basis rather than bought outright, and they move with you if you change hosting provider.

The domain is the address; the hosting is the space the website actually occupies. An address with no hosting leads nowhere, and hosting with no address can only be reached by its IP number. They are usually bought together for convenience but they are separate products and can come from different companies.

It depends entirely on the extension: a .com is a few hundred rupees or a handful of dollars a year, while some newer or premium extensions cost considerably more. Renewal prices often differ from the first-year price, so check both before registering. Current prices for every extension we offer are on our domain search page.

You hold the exclusive right to use it for as long as you keep renewing it, which is a lease rather than outright ownership. If a renewal lapses the name eventually returns to the open market and somebody else can register it. Keep the renewal on auto-renew and the contact email current - a domain lost to a bounced reminder is painful to recover.

You can register a new one and point it at the same website at any time. What you cannot do is rename an existing domain - it is a new registration. Moving a live site to a different domain also means redirecting every old URL to its new equivalent, or you lose the search rankings the old address had earned.

A .com if you can get it, because it is what people type by default. A country extension such as .in or .co.uk is a strong signal if your customers are in that country and often easier to find available. Extension choice affects trust and memorability far more than it affects search ranking, so pick the one your customers will remember.

Where to go next

Registering one, and what goes with it.

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