Domain and hosting – clearing up the confusion
With the influx of tech jargon, it is easy to get confused, especially considering both are integral to your website’s functionality.
The main difference between domain and hosting is that a domain is simply your website’s address, and hosting is where your website’s files are stored.
Domain 101
There are approximately 1.14 billion websites worldwide, each with its specific domain. The domain name is the URL that users type in a web browser’s address bar to access your website. Without a domain, your potential customers won’t be able to find you.
A domain name makes it easy for anyone to find you and access your site, for, without them, we would probably have to search via an IP address. An IP address is a numerical label that is assigned to each website and server on the internet. And let’s be honest, searching via a number isn’t going to help anyone.
Domain names tend to be intuitive and relate to your business or service, and the naming convention is made up of two parts. There is a top-level domain (TLD) and a second-level domain (SLD). The second-level domain usually consists of words or phrases, while the top-level domain refers to the extension at the end.
For example, our site is abcd.com. The SLD is abcd, and the .com is the TLD. Every domain needs to be registered, as each name must be unique. As you can imagine, if two websites had the same address, neither you nor search engines would know which domain to reference.
Hosting – the basics
Every website needs a “home” so that your users can find you on the internet. Hosting is essentially the service that enables your website’s content to be accessible to everyone online. When you use hosting services, you are renting a space on a physical server that stores all of your website’s files and data.
Hosting providers supply the hosting technology and resources that are required for your website to operate effectively and securely. This includes ensuring that the server is up and running on a continuous basis, as well as implementing various security steps. And finally, they ensure that all of your content is successfully transferred to your customer’s browser. In other words, web hosting is the online service that facilitates publishing your website on the internet.
Summary
In summary, you can think of the domain as the name of your business and street address and hosting as the physical building that houses your business.
So now that you know the difference between domain and hosting, Red Poppy offers you a website with your own domain and signs you up to hosting in you name. This assists your business to be reached by your client bases at any time. Find our hosting packages here.
