Domain Name Introduction Guide

In this article, you will find basic information about domains and domain-related subjects/questions.

Please remember, that to run a website, you will need not one domain name. You’ll need a hosting package as well, which includes storage space, e-mail services, and other resources you will need in process of running your website.

Domain Names

Regardless of whether or not you have never facilitated a site, you have, without a doubt, used domain names. Whenever you use a browser to visit a site by name, for example, tbc-hosting.com, you are utilizing domain names.

Domain names are organized in a hierarchic way from left to right. The top-level domain (TLD) is the right-most part of a domain name. The most well-known and popular TLD is ‘.com’, although there are many more TLD’s, like ‘.net’, ‘.org’, ‘.edu’, and ‘.mil’. (country codes, such as .us and .fr, are also TLDs.) You can choose the TLD name for your website when you are registering the domain’s name. However some TLD's, for example, ‘.edu’ and ‘.gov’, are confined to specific sorts of organizations.

The second-level domain (SLD) is the next from TLD part of a domain name. That part of the name you can choose and define however you want. For example, tbc-hosting is the second-level domain in tbc-hosting.com. When buying a domain, this is the part of the name that you own. You also own the name of any sub-domains of your website. Any domain name must have a TLD and a SLD parts.

Sub-domain is, of course, a third-level domain. The most used sub-domain is www, but you are free to change that to whatever you want. Subdomains are sometimes used to subdivide web site functionality. For example, you could have an English version of your web site at en.example.com, and a French version at fr.example.com.

DNS and Name Servers

The Domain Name System (DNS) is what makes the Internet so user-friendly. Instead of using easily remembered names such as tbc-hosting.com, people would have to use a sequence of numbers like 75.98.175.166 (also known as an IP address) every time they wanted to visit a web site or access a service on the Internet. DNS makes those numeric domain names into readable for people words, and it translates the words back into numbers for computers.

When purchasing a domain name from a third-party registrar, you instantly own the name, although it doesn’t point to any website at first. You have to define the name servers that the domain should use, in order to give the visitors of your website the access to it.

Name servers are computers that use DNS to translate the human-readable domain names into IP addresses. Name servers often contain ns in their domain names. When purchasing a domain name directly from us, you don’t have to deal with the configuring of the name server settings, because we do it for you. If you purchased the name from another registrar, you have to update the domain's name server settings to “point” to our servers. Only after you update the domain name (or after we do it for you) people will be able to access your website by typing the domain name in.

Where to go from here

You also have to know how to get you’re your domain to work with TBC-Hosting's servers. There are three different ways for you to set up the domain to work with TBC-Hosting’s servers:

• In case you purchased the domain from us, you won’t need to do anything yourself. We will take care of setting up and getting your domain ready for the world.
• In case you already have a domain, but you purchased it from another registrar, you are able to transfer the domain to TBC-Hosting. All the information, settings, and other aspects of your domain will be transferred.
• IF you own a domain that you bought from another registrar, you may also change the domain’s name server settings so it points to the TBC-Hosting servers. In this case, the billing and domain administration will still remain with the domain's current registrar.