Without much beating around the bush, a domain is a unique name that identifies a website and allows you to access it easily from an Internet browser. For example, allinhosting.com is a domain that allows us to access this Web Site, and only this Web will be displayed if you access it.
You see, the Internet is a network composed of many independent networks and machines (let’s call them nodes), which must communicate with each other in order to access each other and share information. Each “node” on the Internet must have an address with which other nodes can access it; these addresses are called “IP addresses”.
The problem is that IP addresses are long and difficult for us humans to remember because they contain only numbers. Here is an example of an IP address: 216.478.458.789.
Imagine having to remember the number or IP address of every website you want to access, mail server, your bank, etc. Difficult, isn’t it? It was precisely to make things easier that domains were invented.
Domains are names that are easy for humans to understand, and when you use them, something called “Domain Name System” (DNS) is in charge of translating that name to the corresponding IP address and thus allows you to locate a specific node in a simple way.
Types of domains
Now that you know what a domain is and what it is used for, let’s talk a little about the types of domains that exist. There are 2 types of domains: top-level domains and second-level domains.
A top-level domain is one that is composed of 2 parts separated by 1 dot. The first part is the name and the second is an extension of 2 or 3 letters. Here are some examples:
- allinhosting.com
- google.fr
- yahoo.es
- nic.cr
A second level domain (like the first level domains) is also composed of 2 parts, but with the difference that the extension of the domain (the second part) is composed of 2 sub-parts of 2 or 3 letters. Here are some examples of second level domains:
- google.com.mx
- yahoo.co.uk
- nic.com.ar
- yahoo.com.es
See the difference?
Domain extensions or TLDs
As we saw before, every domain has 2 parts: a name and an extension, let’s talk a little bit about the extension. The top level domain extensions are called TLDs and as you may have noticed in the examples, there are many different ones. Let me explain:
When the domain name system was created, it was established that there would be 2 types of extensions: extensions corresponding to countries or territorial zones (ccTLDs) and generic extensions (gTLDs). This list of extensions is updated as the Internet grows and there are currently many ccTLDs and gTLDS.
Within the ccTLDs are all the domains assigned to a specific country such as: .es (Spain), .mx (Mexico), .ar (Argentina), .br (Brazil), .cl (Chile), .cr (Costa Rica), etc. There are also domains assigned to geographical areas, such as .eu (Europe) and lat (Latin America).
The gTLDs group domains that were created to be generic and used worldwide. Each extension originally has a specific use or purpose, however this is not followed to the letter. For example, .com domains are directed to commercial purposes, .org to organizations, .edu to education, .gov to government, .net to web activities, .mil to military uses, .biz to business sites, and so on.
Currently the list of ccTLDs and gTLDs is very extensive and continues to be updated according to the trends and needs of the web. If you are interested in the complete list of top level domains (including ccTLDs and gTLDs) you can see:
Each TLD is managed and governed by a central registrar or ‘registry’ and it is this entity that makes most of the decisions about the evolution of that TLD.
IDN Domains
Now that you know what are the types of domains and TLDs that exist, I will talk about something that is rarely explained but is very important and that is the composition of a domain name according to its language or alphabet.
The Internet is used by people from all over the world and therefore it must be adapted to many variants characteristic of each country, region, language, etc. If, for example, someone in Saudi Arabia wants to navigate in his language, he will naturally use letters and symbols of his alphabet and will want the domains he enters to be in his language and alphabet.
The problem is that the standard system of symbols in domains (called ASCII) does not allow many of the characters and symbols of international alphabets, which was a major limitation.
For this reason, internationalized domain names or IDNs were created, which can contain characters from a different alphabet in the first part of the domain (i.e. the name). Some of the alphabets supported by IDN domains are: Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, German, Greek, Persian, Korean, Swedish, and Spanish of course.
Please note that not all TLDs allow the use of IDN domain names, this must be decided and implemented by the registrar of each TLD.
With IDN domains, it became possible for example, to register for some TLDs domains in Spanish that contain accents (accents), apostrophes, the letter eñe, etc.. That is, if for example you wanted to have a .com domain for a marbles website in Spain, you would no longer have to use canicasespana.com but it is possible to register canicasespana.com .
It sounds great to be able to use all other alphabets in some TLDs of course, but there are 2 limitations: the first as I mentioned, is that not all TLDs allow IDN domains, some prohibit them or implement them only for some languages. The second limitation is that only the most recent browsers support the use of IDN files, which makes that IDN domain websites are little known and not all people can access them; at least for now.
Using a domain name
You already know the basics about domains, now I will tell you how you can register them. Each TLD has a central registry that is in charge of administering it, and this entity in turn authorizes other companies to sell the domain registration service to the general public.
The process of registering a domain is one in which you check if the desired domain name is free and proceed to register it in the central registry and then use it on a website. Normally a domain can be registered for a minimum period of 1 year, and once this process is done there is no way to modify the registered name.
Once you have registered your domain name, you can then associate it with your hosting service and display a website.
To register a domain name you must find a domain registrar and verify that they are capable of registering the TLD name you want. Not all companies register all types of domains, each company has its own offer of TLDs so you should look for the one that suits you best according to this.
Finally you should know that, although there are many domain registrars with gTLDs (generic), ccTLDs (geographic) registrations are more difficult to obtain for many countries. Consult the registry of your ccTLD (which normally has as address http://nic.tld substituting tld for the extension) about their authorized resellers or manage your name directly with them.