What is the difference between a website and a domain name?
Terms such as domain, servers and website hosting are thrown around on a daily basis between web developers and designers, but … if you have never owned a website, understanding these terms can be more than confusing.
So don't worry! The question – "What is the difference between a website and a domain name?" is a very common question and we will try to answer it clearly in the following article.
The difference between a website and a domain name
- Domain name is a form of internet address. It is the most common way to identify websites and email addresses. For example, the domain name of this site is upress.co.il. And if, for example, you use the email service Gmail, say in name@gmail.com, then gmail.com is actually the domain name.
- Website is what people see when they enter a domain in their web browser – it is a collection of pages, files, data and images that together make up the final product displayed on the screen.
You can look at a website as a document file – a standard file that exists in a folder on your computer. A single document file can contain text, tables, images and more. One file can lead to other individual files, more or less complex.
A single document file that can contain text, tables, images and more. One file can lead to other individual files, more or less complex.
A website is the online version of such a document, for example. In such a case, a domain name is simply our way of finding the document file across the web.
We apologize and note that websites are quite complicated in terms of their technical structure, and there is no point in elaborating on the technical subject in this article,
That said, the main thing to remember is that you don't need a full understanding of how all these elements work in order to run and manage your WordPress site. Just as you don't need to be a car mechanic to learn how to drive a car.
In short, if there is only one thing worth remembering from this article, it is:
Domain names are addresses on the internet used to reach websites
And if you want to delve deeper into the subject, you can read more in the FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions
"What types of domains exist?"
A few years ago, there were only a handful of domain types that were available and accepted: .Com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and a few other local domains (for example, .co.il il refers to Israel, and so on).
By the way, these domain endings – such as .com – are called "top-level domains", Top Level Domains or 'TLD' for short.
Today, there is an almost unlimited number of TLDs to choose from. You can get extensions such as .blog .wedding and even.pizza For example, your domain name could be Ilan-and-Hila.wedding.
When it comes to the part that comes before the TLD – in our case upress – it can be anything you want, provided that it is not already taken by someone else and that it consists of alphanumeric characters (AZ, AZ, 0-9) and a middle hyphen only.
"How do I get a domain name?"
You can easily purchase a domain name from one of the popular domain registrars.
These companies will reserve the domain name for you for an annual payment of around 70 NIS.
We do not recommend any particular domain registrar, but you can browse the full list of Israeli domain registrars.
And in case you're wondering … no, it doesn't matter which registrar you decide to buy the domain from, as long as it is available.
"How do domain names work?"
As mentioned earlier, domain names serve as addresses for accessing websites on the internet.
They do this quite cleverly.
In short, domain names are not how computers and computer networks keep track of everything on the internet, but rather serve as numeric addresses, which are called IP, or IPs.
An example of an address IP: 23.57.40.37
However, as you can imagine, these IP these are not very user-friendly. For example, did you know that the address of IP above points on the site of the Israeli Knesset ? Of course not. That is why we use clear domain names to make our lives easier.
So, to understand the process quickly: every time you enter a domain name in the browser's address bar, the domain name is taken by the nearest domain name server, translated to a physical IP physically and then points to the specific site you wanted to see. Nice, isn't it?
"Can a domain name exist without a website, and vice versa?"
- A domain name without a website? – Sure…;-))… You can, for example, use the domain name only to get a cool email address, like info@YOURDOMAIN.com.
- A website without a domain name? – Not really… Technically it can exist, but it is not a useful setup; it is good for websites under development, local websites, or for testing projects.
"What is the difference between websites and web pages?"
A web page is a single page on the internet, whereas a website is a whole set of web pages under one domain name.
- What you are reading right now is a web page.
- Everything available under upress.co.il is a website.
"How can I set up a site quickly (and easily) ?"
To start a website, you need three things:
- Domain
- Hosting account
- and the code / software / application we want to run (in our case WordPress contains the entire domain of code management)
We recommend using WordPress; it is a platform that can be used even if you have no experience building websites, with a large and growing number of plugins and an entire support community, and we are a significant part of this community.
