Domain Name

One of the first questions we are asked is “Why do I need a domain name?” quickly followed by “Why do I need to pay for it?”.

Domain

The internet doesn’t use domain names, it uses IP addresses. A domain name is there to let people find your website without having to remember the IP address (we’ll get to Google and other Search Engines on the SEO page). A simple example is the contact list on your phone. You could remember every number in your phone and just dial each as you need it, but we remember names, not numbers, so we have the name next to the number. We only need the name of the person to dial that number (assuming we can remember their name) and we can search the name as we need just like on the web.

For domain names, we don’t need to remember 148.163.199.1 (which is an IP address), we only need to remember bbc.co.uk.

A domain is more of a rental that we pay yearly for, if you forget to renew, it will go up for sale again and we can lose a domain.

To follow on from the mobile phone contact list analogy, there is a ‘contact list’ for domains called DNS (Domain Name Service). When we type in a domain, a look-up takes place, and your device will go to the IP address in the background. For more information see Wikipeadia.

A domain is more of a rental that we pay yearly for, if you forget to renew, it will go up for sale again and we can lose a domain. Many companies have forgot to renew domains in the past, including, famously, Microsoft.

At Huyton Web Services we will help you purchase the right domain for your website, but two words of warning:

If you go looking for a domain and do not purchase the domain, someone else (including the domain service provider) may purchase the domain and try to sell it back at a grossly inflated cost.
If you do purchase a domain you may lock yourself into a host provider and their costs.

We would suggest either going with Amazon Web Services to purchase the domain or simply wait and until you have spoken to us.

Subdomain

A subdomain can be thought of as a folder inside the main domain, for example this domain is huytonweb.com but if we wanted a separate or “website” under our domain called 'mail' to keep a mail server or a backup of our mail, we can create the mail subdomain and we could access it using mail.huytonweb.com.

We can create these for you under your main domain, let us know if you need more information.

Domain Cost

A domain will cost anything from £10 to £1,000s depending on the name and the TLD (.com, .co.uk, .net) and is usually payable each year. The usual is £10 per domain, per year and is usually best purchased with the hosting so there is no chance of losing the domain you want.

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We have put these pages together to explain some of the core concepts, how they relate to us and, more importantly, you, because over the years we've been asked questions quite frequently. If there is something you don't understand or would like clarity on please contact us and we'll do our best to explain.