A domain name, like www.coolexample.com, is a lot like a street address for a house or business. Let’s use the White House as an example. The street address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is an exact location — like an IP address. You might not know the exact street address, but when you visit Washington, D.C., you can tell your cabbie that you want to visit the White House and still get there. This is how a domain name is used: It’s an easy way to reach the exact location of a website without having to remember its numeric address.

A domain name consists of, at least, a top-level and a second-level domain. A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name located to the right of the dot (“.”). The most common TLDs are .com, .net, and .org.

Many domains, also called extensions, can be registered by anyone, like .com, .net, and .org. A second-level domain (SLD) is the portion of the domain name that is located immediately to the left of the dot and domain name extension. For example, the SLD in coolexample.com is coolexample.

Advanced Domain Name Description: A domain name represents a physical point on the Internet — an IP address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) governs coordination of the links between IP addresses and domain names across the Internet. With this standardized coordination, you can find websites on the Internet by entering domain names instead of IP addresses into your Web browser.

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifying string of numbers, like 216.27.61.137, given to every individual computer, server, and network on the Internet. Like a license plate is used to help identify vehicles, an IP address is used to identify and locate information online. Additionally, they allow for communication over the internet between devices and networks connected to the internet.

The www before your domain name is a subdomain, not part of the domain name itself. Therefore, if you set up your www CNAME record to point to your primary A record, your site will resolve both at www.coolexample.com and coolexample.com.

If you can reach your website by typing in your domain without the www but cannot reach it when you type the www, then your CNAME might be set up incorrectly. Follow the instructions below to ensure your domain name’s settings are correct.

When visitors enter your domain name into a Web browser, the browser request uses your domain name to find the domain name’s associated IP address and, therefore, the website. People use domain names instead of IP addresses because it is easier to remember a name rather than a series of numbers.

Your domain name and its associated IP address are stored in a common database along with every other domain and associated IP address that are accessible via the Internet.

A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is the address of an Internet website or webpage. Think of a URL as a street address for the location of information on the Internet. For instance, a complete URL like http://thisexample.com/music, points you to the music page of the thisexample.com website.

Take a look at the anatomy of this URL to better understand how they direct online users to specific information: http://thisexample.com/music/rockmusic.html

http:// = protocol
thisexample = domain name
.com =TLD
/music/rockmusic.html = path
/music/ = directory
/rockmusic.html = file name

Nameservers are the Internet’s equivalent to phone books. A nameserver maintains a directory of domain names that match certain IP addresses (computers). The information from all the nameservers across the Internet is gathered in a central registry.

Nameservers make it possible for visitors to access your website using a familiar domain name, instead of having to remember a series of numbers.

For a full list of FAQ, please visit our secure help and support page.