What’s a Domain Name? It’s the name you type in the address bar of your browser. It’s your Internet name! How do you know if the name you want is open for use?
An international organization known as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) assigns unique names to companies and individuals who wish to purchase a unique set of letters and numbers, usually for a year’s time. So, when I chose “websbydeb.com” for my company name, I looked to see if that was open.
Hosting sites for websites usually offer this service (more about website hosting in a later blog post!). There are hundreds or thousands of organizations that offer purchase of domain names – I chose namecheap.com.
The only thing provided with reserving a domain name is the name itself – this doesn’t put you on the Internet yet! But, once I rent the name, for the next 12 months, no one else can use “websbydeb.com” as a domain name.
Once you have hosting, you’ll go through a process to assign the name you’ve purchased to a physical location – a disk farm where your website will reside. The domain name will be translated to a series of numbers (such as “198.68.225.48”) and whatever content (images, videos, text) that has been created for your website is displayed.
Large, well-known companies need to go through the same process – whether you have “target.com” or “weather.com”.
