"Learning what all these words mean, even the ones we thought we already knew"
First, let's look again at some vocabulary — which should be consistent across the web, no matter which "hosting provider" or "DNS registrar" you use.
| word | definition | |
|---|---|---|
| 📝 | website | a file or a bundle of files (usually with .HTML extension somewhere), sometimes living on a server |
| 🖥 | server | a computer that’s always connected to the internet, so when someone types your URL or domain in, the server will offer up your website. Usually you have to pay to rent a server, also called “hosting” or a “host.” |
| 📍 | IP | “internet protocol” address, which is a unique string of numbers that’s an address for any device connected to the internet which other machines use to find that device—whether it's your home router, your computer, your cellphone, or a server. Might be something like: 198.74.60.197, 10.0.1.18. |
| 〰️ | domain | an understandable piece of language that points to an IP address. For example, nytimes.com, allmyfriendsatonce.com, special.fish |
| 〰️/➿ | URL | “universal resource location” which is the specific address to access any resource. if you type in a domain name, most servers will present you index.html by default. For example, https://special.fish/anna, http://allmyfriendsatonce.com/style/style.css |
| 🤝🖥 | hosting provider | a business that handles providing servers / web hosting. In this example we'll show two options: GitHub Pages (free) and NearlyFreeSpeech (cheap), but there are many others. Usually you have to pay for a host. |
| 🤝〰️ | domain name registrar | a business that handles the reservation of domain names as well as the assignment of IP addresses for those domain names. contracts for domains are typically on a yearly basis. In this tutorial, we'll use name.com, but there are many others, like iwantmyname.com, namecheap.com, and gandi.net. Note some hosting companies are also domain name registrars. |
| 📚 | DNS | “domain name system” which is like all the phonebooks 📗📕📘 of the entire internet. Each phonebook has millions of lines, each showing which domain name 〰️ (used by humans) connect to which IP address 📍 (used by computers). So DNS translates domain names to IP addresses so browsers can load internet resources |
| 📕 | nameserver | a single phonebook that is owned by the hosting provider that lists all the domain names 〰️ associated with its customers, and their IP addresses 📍 |
| 〰️📍 | DNS record | a line (one of millions) in the metaphorical phonebook, connecting domain 〰️ to IP 📍 |
| 🌐 | TLD | a “top-level domain” is the rightmost part of a domain name such as .com. certain TLDs are reserved for specific geographic areas or societal services. Other examples include .org, .net, .school, etc. New TLDs are added every year, see this list on Wikipedia. Google around for the latest. |