> What is a Domain Name?

Imagine that everybody in the world used their Social Security number or 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 (you can prove that by glancing away from this page and then trying to quote the example IP address above!)

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.

The Structure of a Domain Name
Let's look in more detail at a domain name, using this site's domain name as an example. This site's domain name is gsacomputers.co.uk you can check this easily by looking at in the URL or location bar of your browser. 

.co.uk is the top domain under which this 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). Every domain name is registered under a top domain of some kind. The top domain is often known as the domain extension - these are the same thing, so don't get mixed up!

Don't be caught out: .com is pronounced "dot-com". Other international domains, such as .net or .org are pronounced "dot-net" and "dot-org" respectively. Country-specific domain names, on the other hand, tend to get spelled out. .jp is pronounced "dot-jay-pee" for instance.


One of the best things about domain names is that they are unique. I can relax in the knowledge that there is nobody else out there who owns the domain name "gsacomputers.co.uk". This is because all domain names are recorded in a central database, and each record in the database must be unique. This is also what makes some domain names quite valuable.

Always remember that when we talk about "owning" a domain name, we are really talking about the exclusive right to use that name. It is not possible to own a domain name outright, and you will have to pay a periodic renewal fee to keep this "right to use" your domain name. Also, since you don't own the name itself, under certain circumstances a court can take your right to use a domain name away from you.
Like it or hate it, this is the way the whole domain name system has been set up, and run for over 10 years. So you are going to have to accept this rather strange way of working with domain names.

Here are a few examples of domain names that you may already be familiar with. They belong to well-known companies or organizations.

  • ibm.com
  • apple.com
  • whitehouse.gov

FACTS ·

  • Over 100,000 new websites are coming on-line every single day.
  • Over 70,000 new INTERNET users are getting on-line every day.
  • Over 25,000 people each day are turning to home based business.
  • In the year 2,000 it is estimated there will be over 300 million people using the INTERNET and over 1 billion within the next 10 years.
  • Global Business ·
  • Your business open 24 hours a day
  • 600,000 people are moving to the internet every day and over 300 million users will move to the internet in the next three years ·
  • If your business is not on the internet you are not keeping up with your competition ·
  • 7 people per second join the world wide web ·
  • 80,000 go on-line daily ·
  • 10 million Britons use the net ·
  • By the year 2003 business to business trade in "hard goods" on the net in the USA alone will be worth nearly a trillion dollars a year
  • Experts estimate, total world wide internet trade will be worth $2 trillion ·
  • On-line sales in the UK are predicted to soar from £406 million last year to £6.1 billion by the year 2003.
  • * Research on behalf of Barclays Bank and BT predicts that by 2003, 98% of all businesses in the UK will have their own websites.