What Is a Domain Name, Subdomain and Addon Domain

What Is a Domain Name, Subdomain and Addon Domain

I’ll explain simply what is a domain name and the difference of subdomain and addon domain. I’ll also show all parts of the domain name. After this video, you will be able to identify different parts of the URL and its structure.

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Summary of the video:

What is a domain name?

A domain is part of the address you type into browsers when you visit any website. For example, KFC’s domain is kfc.com.

A domain on the internet is like an address in real life. When you type in the domain in the browser, your browser will go to that address and display whatever is in that address.

Actually, computers use IP addresses to communicate with each other. However, it would be pretty hard to remember Google’s address if it was 192.238.624.23.

Luckily that idea didn’t just die during random afternoon around 4.20pm and now the domain names are used to identify different pages.

A domain can be any letter or a number, but I would keep it as simple as possible.

You also need to register your domain to use it, since all domains are unique and each is associated with unique IP because websites are just computers connected to the internet that display certain files publicly. I’ll show you how to do it later in this video series.

Domain structure

So let’s look at domains a bit more closely, here is a structure of web address:

https://blog.punchsalad.com/arnold-is-lit

Prefix or protocol – usually your browser adds this automatically. I’ll show you later how to get https which is more secure and preferred by Google, compared to http.

Subdomain – This is usually www, but you can also have other words. When you buy a domain, you can have multiple sub-domains, it doesn’t cost you extra.

In general, when you get started you don’t really need any subdomains, it’s useful when you want to keep certain parts of your site separate. Such as support or information for developers.

Google uses a lot of different subdomains to distinguish between all its services.

Domain name – this is the part that you will be purchasing a bit further in this video series.

Extension or top-level domain – This can be .com, .net, .io, .pizza, .rock

and for country specific .de & .co.uk. And many more!
Choosing this correctly is really important and we will cover it later in this video series.

As there are certain extensions that are associated with certain industries. Like .io with tech startups and triple x with.. Adult entertainment.

Web page name – this is where your content live you can have multiple subfolders. But in general the shorter you keep your URLs the better it is for SEO and easier for users to navigate. We will dive into these later on.

Oh, and a domain name is not the same as URL. But domain name is part of an URL.

Addon domain
Another term that was confusing me for a long time is the addon domain. In shared web hosting, every account is associated with the primary domain. It’s usually the first domain you purchase. And all the domains you buy and use on that shared hosting will be add-on domains.

For example, my main domain is punchsalad.com, but on the same web hosting, I can have more than 1 domain (you have to pay for this ability).

So any domain that I register after the first one will be an addon domain.

It’s just a way for hosting providers to identify the primary domain and then the addons. Technically they are the same and you can do the same things with both types.