What is a domain? Domain Name and its components explained وأنواعه⭐️

What is a domain name and how do I choose the best domain for my site?
In this lesson, the What's the Best Hosting team explains what a domain name is in detail and its components, as well as tips on how to easily choose the best domain for your website.

Choosing a good Domain Name, or more commonly known as a domain name, is one of the building blocks of a successful website. This is because the domain name is the address of your website and the user sees it before visiting your site, whether it is in search engine results or on another website that has added a link to your site or one of its pages.

Therefore, when you choose a good domain for your site, it will give the user an overall good impression of your site, in addition to the ease of remembering the domain, which will stick in the visitor's memory and make it easier for them to visit the site whenever they want without having to search for your site in search engines.

On the contrary, when you choose your domain poorly, you will often leave your site burdened with a title that is easily forgettable or even confusing to visitors, which will most likely reduce the number of visitors to your site and thus reduce profits, as the vast majority of websites rely on incoming traffic to generate profits, known as "Traffic".

But first, it is necessary to understand what a domain name is, how a domain works, and what it consists of. This way, you will have a knowledge of domains backed by the right information that will be enough to choose a strong domain name for your website that will help attract visitors to your site and help build a strong identity for your website.

What is a Domain Name?

A website's domain name is one of the main parts of a website that any website needs. Just as every house or property has an accessible address, a website also has its own unique address(es), the Domain Name, or more commonly known as a "domain".

Domain Name Usage Highlights

• Visiting the site: Visitors can visit the website by typing the website domain in the address bar of the web browser.
• Contact the website: By using a domain, it becomes easier for people to communicate with the website by sending emails to email accounts that end with the website's domain, such as [email protected].
• Building and maintaining a brand: A domain enables your business website to protect its brand and prevent it from being exploited by competitors or unauthorized persons.

and other uses that are important to every person and business.

Domain Name Components "Domain Name"

A Domain Name consists of three main parts separated by a dot . These parts are Range extension.Domain name.Subdomain The following image shows a practical example of the components of a website domain. www.afdalhosting.com.

Domain parts work together by the principle of dependency or "part of a whole". The domain name is part of or subordinate to the domain extension, and in the same way, the subdomain is subordinate to the domain name and so on.

How does a domain work?

A domain name works based on the Domain Name System (DNS), a decentralized database that is one of the core systems of the Internet.

Every device connected to the Internet has its own unique identifier, the Internet Protocol Address (IP address), and in order to connect or communicate with that device, you will need this unique identifier.

An IP identifier is a set of numbers in the case of IPv4, the most widespread and widely used version of the Internet Protocol, and a sequence of letters and numbers in the case of IPv6, which is increasingly being used due to the depletion of IPv4 addresses.

IP address examples (4th and 6th version):

• IP address (version 4): 12.345.67.890
• Internet Protocol Address (6th Edition): 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334

As you can see, it is difficult to memorize the IP address of every website you want to visit, and the IP address can change when the Web Server on which the website is hosted or the ISP changes, which means that it is difficult to rely on the IP address only for websites, web applications, and most web systems.

Hence the need for a Domain Name.

What is DNS and how does it work?

The Domain Name System (DNS), or Domain Name System (DNS), is a core system of the international Internet. The system consists of a group of servers responsible for translating the domain names of websites into their IP addresses.

DNS does this by relying on a decentralized database of website domain names and IP addresses of the servers associated with those domains or on which those websites are hosted, known as Website Hosting.

For example, the popular search engine Google google.com It currently corresponds in the Domain Name System to this IP address: 216.58.198.78 * Thus, when queried for the address of the Google server on which its website is located, DNS will return the IP address, which will be used by the web browser to connect to the machine on which the website or server is located.

* This address may differ from the result of your search and may show you different addresses for the same domain because large websites and companies use a CDN content distribution network that relies on a large number of servers distributed around the world, and the IP address will show you the closest of those servers to you geographically.

What happens when you visit a website?

When you visit a website or a webpage on a website, you click on the link to that page or enter the link in the address bar of your web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari) and the page appears. So easy and simple, right?

In fact, it's simple for you, but in the background, a series of steps take place without showing you until the page you want appears, and in the following steps, we will show you the most important ones.

1. You enter the page's URL in your browser or click on its link.
2. The browser fetches the IP address of the server on which the domain resides by querying the DNS system.
3. The browser establishes a connection with the server via its IP address.
4. The browser then sends an HTTP Request to the server and asks for the requested page or file.
5. The server receives and processes the request and prepares the response, often with operations and calculations, especially in dynamic sites.
6. The server sends the response to your browser via the HTTP protocol as well and this response is called HTTP Response.
7. The browser receives the response, which is often a webpage encoded in HTML, an image, a video, a music file, etc.
8. The browser displays the content of the reply or response to you on the screen.

Tips for Buying a Good Domain

It is important that the domain name you buy for your website is unique and powerful because it will be the address of your website and your business on the Internet.

We at AfdalHosting.com always like to refer to your website as the headquarters of your company or business in cyberspace and is just as important as your physical headquarters on the ground.

Therefore, when you choose a headquarters for your company, you will definitely want to get the best by choosing a distinctive, attractive and easy-to-remember address, and it is no different when it comes to your website's domain and its web hosting, and here is a set of tips for choosing an effective domain for your website.

How do I choose a premium domain name for a website?

1. Choose a short domain

The fewer characters your website's domain has, the better.

A short domain is easy to remember and easy to type, and it gives visitors a good impression of your site, while a long domain will discourage visitors from visiting your site due to their apprehension and anxiety about the site, especially if your domain name contains too much keyword stuffing.

2. Choose your site's domain extension carefully

Try using the com. as much as possible.

There are hundreds of domain name extensions available for registration, but we at What is the Best Hosting advise you not to use any extension other than the com. This is because it is the most common and widely used, with more than 37% of all registered domains reportedly using this extension.

If this extension is not available, try changing the domain name itself to an available name or use another domain extension such as .net or .org. or info. Or use another of the new extensions such as xyz. andme. You can also use a local domain that ends with your country extension, such as eg. in Egypt andsa. in Saudi Arabia etc.

3. Avoid numbers and hyphen "dash" - In the domain name

The domain name can contain letters, numbers, and a hyphen - Known among users as "dash" or "dash" only, the domain cannot begin or end with a hyphen or contain consecutive hyphens.

However, we recommend that you avoid buying a domain that contains numbers or a hyphen - Not at all, so that the domain is easier to write and remember.

The only exception to this is the brand name, so if your website or company name contains a number or a comma, you can buy a domain name that is identical to that name. It is also preferable to buy similar domain names that do not contain a comma or number and redirect to the primary domain to avoid being purchased by another person or entity.

4. Choose a domain that is easy to remember, write and pronounce

When searching for a domain name, make sure the domain name is easy to type, easy to pronounce, and easy for visitors to memorize and remember, so that it sticks in their memory easily and they are more likely to return to your site after the first visit.

5. Try to include keywords in the domain as much as possible

Keywords are the important words that visitors to your site search for in search engines, and writing them in the domain name helps improve your site's ranking in search results, which leads to a significant increase in the number of visitors to your site coming from search engines.

To give you a real-life example, a website domain is the best hosting afdalhostingcom. Besides being an exact match to our site name, it also includes the very important keyword hosting which means hosting in Arabic and is the specialty of our main website.

6. Avoid misspellings in the domain name

Naturally, the domain will be associated with your site for life and it will be very difficult to change it later.
It's important to choose your domain name carefully and make sure it's not misspelled, especially if you don't know English well. You can use online translation services such as Google Translate to make sure your domain name is free of spelling errors.

7. Choose a unique and brandable domain

When choosing a domain name for your site, it is essential that it is unique and not duplicated or similar to your competitors so that it is unique and not duplicated. It is also important that the domain name is easily transferable to a brand, company name, or business entity.

8. Avoid repeating characters in the domain name

One of the common mistakes among Arab website owners when booking a domain name for their website is choosing a domain name with consecutive repeating letters. This may be due to trying to choose a name with a pronunciation close to the pronunciation of the domain name in the Arabic language.

However, it is important to try to avoid this while purchasing a domain name for your site, as besides making your domain harder to memorize, it also increases the length of the domain name, and some of your visitors are sure to misspell your domain name, in addition to being difficult to pronounce.

9. Look up the history of the Domain Name before using it

It is common for your domain to have been previously registered and owned by someone else before you used it, especially if your site's domain name is unique. Domain history can be detrimental to your site, especially if it is used for malicious or illegal activities such as pornography, hacking, user fraud, spam, etc.

Although the site is no longer owned by the previous person, the reputation will still be associated with it in the minds of users, search engines and other sites, not to mention the backlinks that may harm your current site if they are not deleted or disavowed, which is unfortunately not easy and may take time, effort and resources.

Fortunately, there are tools and services that allow you to easily see the history of the domain and website, most notably the free service Wayback Machine, which is a digital archive of the content of most websites at different times and is constantly updated.

Using these tools, you can see what content was previously published on the domain and whether or not it was harmful to your users and to you.

10. Try to buy a domain that matches your brand

One of the most important points you should prioritize while booking a domain name for your website is to make sure it matches your business name, your brand, or your name if it's a personal website.

How to Buy a Domain Name?

Now that you have learned about the domain, its components, and how to choose a good domain for your website, it remains for you to learn how to buy a domain name or what is also known as "domain reservation" and what are the companies that provide this service and their prices.

There are many companies that provide domain name registration services around the world, including local companies and international companies, and these companies differ in quality even though they provide almost the same service at similar prices.

The What is the Best Hosting team has tried and tested many domain reservation companies and we have prepared a list of the cheapest Domain Name Registrars with their prices, benefits and gifts that they offer to customers. You can also get a free domain with hosting as a gift from web hosts that offer it for free to our website visitors, such as Bluehost, Hostinger, HostGator and others.

Frequently Asked Questions About Domain Names

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about domains and the answers to those questions.

Do you have a question or concern about domain name or web hosting?
You can add your inquiry in a comment below and the Best Hosting team will get back to you as soon as possible, God willing!