Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Getting Your Own Domain Name

Domain names, like dummies.com, are the addresses of sites on the World Wide Web. Picking and registering your own domain name are two of the most critical phases in your site planning, and I show you how to do both in this section. When you tell your Web browser to go to www.dummies.com, it’s obvious where you’re going to end up — at the For Dummies Web site. Your computer doesn’t know that, though. It can’t actually go to a named site; instead, it asks a domain name server (DNS) to translate that name into a more computer-friendly set of numbers known as an IP address. It’s like getting into a cab and telling the driver to go to the Acme Building. He asks you where it is, and you tell him it’s at 1123 Main Street.

Domain extensions — the final letters at the end of an Internet address — are known as the top-level domain, or TLD. They’re called “top level” because you read Internet addresses from right to left, and the part after the last dot is the highest step in a hierarchy that eventually leads down from the Internet as a whole, step by dotted step, to the particular computer you’re going to. Here are the current domain extensions:

✓	.aero	Air transportation companies
✓	.biz	Business firms
✓	.cat	Catalan language sites
✓	.com	Commercial operations
✓	.coop	Cooperatives
✓	.edu	Educational institutions
✓	.gov	U.S. government and agencies
✓	.info	All uses
✓	.jobs	Human resources
✓	.mil	U.S. military
✓	.mobi	Mobile services
✓	.museum	Museums
✓	.name	Private individuals’ sites
✓	.net	Internet ...