A domain name is one of the most basic pieces of the internet. Basically, it is the way that you refer to a site on the internet, it is its address, or simply its name. Here are some domain names you may have heard of:

www.google.com
www.facebook.com
www.thekeesh.com

These are all domain names. But so is

mail.google.com

and as you can see from this short list, it’s slightly different. It has a different part at the start, which we call a “subdomain,” or something more specific.

On the far right we have the “top level domains,” (or TLDs), like com, edu, gov, and org. (Don’t look now but there is a new xxx TLD.) Then we get more specific with “google,” and even more specific with “www” or “mail.” These names are just ways to identify sites on the internet.

http://www.google.com

There’s also one more funny part in this one, which is “http,” which is the protocol. This is not technically part of the domain name, but we’ll talk more about this in a later post.

The main point here is to understand that there are such things called “domain names,” and they are how you identify websites on the internet. There are different parts and they get more specific going right to left.