Domain, webhosting, website… which is which?
Even though the World Wide Web has been around for over 20 years, many people are still confused by all the terminology and often get them mixed up. In this article, we’ll give you a brief and simple explanation that will give you a clearer idea.
Domain – in short, it’s the address of a particular website on the World Wide Web. Similar to your house address, it consists of several parts. The first part of the address is ‘www’, an abbreviation of the World Wide Web but most modern browsers today can recognise a domain with or without the ‘www’ in front. The second part of the web address is the domain name and most of the time reflects the contents of the website or a company name. The last part of the web address is the Top Level Domain (TLD) that most users are familiar with such as .com, .net, .org, etc. Some TLD are also geographic in nature such as .com.my, .my, .com.sg, .asia, etc. A domain name is unique and there can only be one-of-its-kind.
Webhosting – this is where all the files of the website are stored, much like the storage space in your harddisk. A web hosting provider rents out ‘space’ on their servers that ‘hosts’ your files and come in many different configurations. Additionally, web hosting providers may provide other maintenance work such as backup, root configuration, maintenance, disaster recoveries, etc, so pricing will vary from each provider.
Website – a website is made up of many files that are rendered on a computer’s browser. A website will contain images, text and in some cases databases to run it. In most cases, you will need to engage website development companies to help you create professional looking websites. First impression counts, you don’t want potential customers to reach a website that’s riddled with errors or poorly designed.
Essentially, for a website to go “live” on the Internet, you need to secure a domain name first and get the webhosting configured properly before anyone can ‘reach’ your website on the World Wide Web.