This short primer on domain names may help you understand some of the geek speak that inevitably creeps into our sales information, and hopefully put you on the right track to securing your new location on the Internet.

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is your complete address on the internet.  Its primary component is your domain name, and is the human readable address of your internet point of presence.  To be effective it should be descriptive, and easy to remember. If the name represents a business, it should end in 'dot com' because most of your customers don't know, care or understand about top level domains (TLD's) and expect you to have a .com at the end of your name.  If you don't and someone else has the same name, they may get all of your traffic, and at the very least your company will end up located on a quiet backstreet of the Information Super Highway.

If you are NOT a commercial business you may want to register the .com version of your domain name so that those who believe all addresses end in 'dot com' will find you anyway.

There are several parts to your URL, and as an owner of a domain you should be aware of them because the way you use them makes all the difference.

Reading the domain name, for example: http://www.webmarketingnorthewest.com the way a human does (left to right) the fist part is the protocol.  http: stands for "Hyper Text Transfer Protocol", which literally means to open the connection to the server on port 80.  The // sets of an area little used now that is reserved for username:password in plain text (which explains why it's isn't used anymore).  The anonymous  user is blank by definition.  The next part www set of by the first 'dot' is the server name.  Most http servers use www for "World Wide Web" - because there are so many 'plain vanilla' web sites most users believe the http://www. is just some obnoxious geek thing and the browser developers have helped them along by recognizing the three w's in a row as a web address and prepending the protocol and user:password portion automatically.  You should know that the server name can also be used as a sub-domain name.  For a good example of how to use a sub-domain look at what Microsoft did with their support site http://support.microsoft.com.  If you host with us, your control panel provides you with the opportunity to create and use sub-domains.  By using a sub-domain this way you can put up several functionally different web sites that share a common domain name.  In other words many front doors for the cost of one building.  The next part of your URL is the domain name you selected, for example 'WebMarketingNorthwest' followed by the upper level domain that your domain belongs to, in our case '.com'. 

When a browser tries to find your web site their computer sends a request to their DNS (Domain Name System) server (everyone has at least one, usually two), where it reads the name in reverse order to find out what Internet Protocol (IP) address to use to reach your web site.  Starting with the TLD (.com) and working backwards. 

Typically your domain name will be hosted one or more DNS servers located on the same local area network that your physical (file) and logical (web) server are located on.  The server or sub-domain name is how the file system that hosts your domain can tell which web server to connect to a browser. 

You can have a lot of servers, and they can be located all over the world, all from one domain name.  For example, www.jnoffice.com is hosted from a datacenter in Los Angeles, California.  but po.jnoffice.com is located in Port Orchard, Washington, as is jnoffice.net.  By using the DNS servers that host the jnoffice.com and jnoffice.net domain names, we are able to create CNAMES that point to the physical addresses of each.  The effect is similar to using a sub-domain except that the host is remotely located.  There are a wide variety of ways we can use DNS to implement business requirements that go far beyond simply publishing web pages.  For more information and personal consultation please contact our sister company J&N Office Design.

Most upper level names (.com, .us, etc.) are available through us for about $10.00/Year.  We can host any valid top-level domain name.

If you already own your domain, you will need to transfer in your domain to our name servers.  In our experience it is much simpler to let us register your domain name than to buy it elsewhere and try to transfer it in.

If you do not already own a domain name, you may purchase consulting services from J&N Office Design to help you select an appropriate and useful domain name and avoid problems such as Alternative DNS Roots.

If you are just starting a business, and expect it go grow into a business with employees, computers and networks we would like to suggest that you invest in the design services offered by J&N Office Consulting to get your business set on the correct path from the beginning.

To find out more please click on DNS Records in the menu, or click here

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