Cracking Media

So what’s a domain name?

They’re for web professional only!

Or are they?

In this post we put the spotlight on Domain Names. Simply put, websites have what’s called a domain name. Our domain name is www.crackingmedia.com and this appears in the address bar of your browser when you come to the homepage of our site.

This part of the address makes up what’s called the root of the web site address, as you visit the pages on a site their page names will appear after the root address, for example www.crackingmedia.com/promotional-video, is the root of the site followed by the page name.

Though your web developer can manage a domain name for you, there is no reason why you cannot buy one from a registrar and manage it yourself, it is amazing how many people we come across that believe that domain names are for web professionals only. It is also a strongly held myth that when you buy a domain name you must also have web hosting to go with it, and this must be bought from the same place.

It is true that web hosting is required if you wish to publish a web site ‘but’ when you purchase a domain name you will have the ability to point the name at any hosting provider, usually through a management control panel, so you can look for the hosting deal that fits you or your business the best.

Another reason to buy a domain name is to personalise your email address, rather than using the email address provided to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Let’s say they have given you an email address like 35458isnotu@yourid.ispprovider.whatever and you wish to change it to something more personal.

This can be done if you purchase your own domain name and then use an option called Email forwarding in your domain name control panel. Email forwarding will pass on all mail that’s sent to your new domain name through to your ISP email address, where you will pick it up in the usual manner.

So in short domain names are not just for web professionals, they are for anybody and can be used with or without hosting. They can also be transferred and moved to different registrars. The domain name that you purchase is registered to you, which gives you control.

I hope this has helped to clear up some of the mystery about domain names.

Mike Wheeler

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under Helping Hand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.