The best way to understand domain names is to think of them as an address that points to the place where your website files are located.
Let’s think about a physical example of this: You want to send a letter to a house. You know the address, but you could not just drive there because you do not really know where it is. So, you pop the letter into a mailbox where it is collected by the Post Office who know how to find the house at that address, and they deliver your letter.
If we use the above example, but this time we convert the objects into the internet realm:
- Your house would be your website
- Your address would be your domain name
- The Post Office would be what is known as Domain Name System (DNS) servers.
To get simple view of how a domain name works, we must understand what happens when you type the name into your browser.
To view the Patrick Internet website, we type the domain name into our browser. Our website is located on one of the many millions of web servers dotted around the internet, but your browser has no idea which one, so it asks the DNS for directions to the website. The DNS looks up the address of our website, from their database and pass it back to the browser, which then fetches the website and displays it to you.
There are a few more details to the above, but that is the general idea.
Buying a domain name is extremely easy, but finding the right name is where it gets harder! With so many websites and domain names already in existence, you might find that your preferred name is already taken. We recognise the struggle to find a suitable name often leads to a compromise, and as such, we urge you to choose a domain name that is not too long, doesn’t contain hyphens if possible, and has some relevance to your website name. Ultimately, it will be your content that dictates your rankings, not your domain name.
To get started, use our domain search tool to find the right name for you. It will also offer suggestions, based around your original entry. This can be useful if your preferred name is already taken. Our domain prices start at £6.69 per year, when bought without web hosting. Our full domain name price list can be found here. If you require for an extension that is not listed, we can probably add it to the list within a few hours. We try to keep the list to a reasonable amount, otherwise it becomes mind boggling!
We offer a free UK domain name with all our web hosting packages. That is a free domain name for life, not just the first year, like so many other hosts catch you out with. Our free domain will auto renew if you have an active web hosting package assign to the domain name. Once you cancel the hosting, the domain will revert to the full price.
Remember that buying a domain does not automatically provide hosting, so please remember to add hosting during your domain purchase.
You also get a free domain with our WordPressOne high performance WordPress hosting.
Let us take a more detailed look at the structure of a Domain, in particular, Name Servers. I am sure you’ve come across them, perhaps not when you first buy a domain, but most likely when you are learning how to transfer a domain to another provider.
When you transfer your domain to Patrick Internet, we provide you with our nameservers, which are:
- ns1.patrickinternet.com
- ns2.patrickinternet.com
- ns3.patrickinternet.com
- ns4.patrickinternet.com
Name servers can be viewed as a web hosting company’s own internal address/post system. They know which of our web servers hold each of our client’s websites.
When a DNS server passes a browser an address, it passes the name server address. Your browser requests the website from our name servers, which look up the server holding the website files, and serves them to the browser.
Domain names come with many different extensions. The most widely used is .com, but there are many other extensions like .co.uk, .uk .org, .net, .tv, .info, .io, and lots more. If your website is aimed at a UK audience, then we recommend using the .co.uk domain extension.
Let’s explore some of the different types of domain extensions available through our domain search tool.
Global Top level domains (gTLDs) are generic domain extensions that are listed at the highest level in the domain name system (DNS).
There are literally hundreds of gTLDs, with the most popular being .com, .org, and .net. Other gTLDs are lesser known and should be used where you cannot find the more popular gTLDS. Lesser known domain extension examples are, .biz, .club, .info, .agency, to name a few.
You can learn more about the life cycle of gTLDs from ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Country code top-level domains (ccTLD) are country specific domain names which end with country code extension like .uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany, .in for India, and should be used by websites that want to target audiences in a specific country.
A sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) is a category of TLDs that has a sponsor representing a specific community served by the domain extension. For example, .edu for education-related organizations, .gov.uk for the UK government, .mil for the United States military, and more.
Remember, to get started, use our domain search tool to find the right domain name for you.
