Domain Names — The Address of a Site

Lesson 7 · taught by Pip

Our site is living on an always-on server. But a server is really just a numbered machine among millions. Nobody wants to memorize a string of numbers to visit a shop. So we give the site a friendly name — a domain name, like the one you'd type into the address bar. Today, how that name works.

The plain idea: a domain name is a memorable label that stands in for a server's hard-to-remember number, so people can find a site by typing words instead of digits.

A name in your contacts

Think about your phone. You don't memorize your friend's phone number — you save them as "Mom" or "Sam," and tap the name. Behind the scenes, the name points to the real number; you just never have to see it.

A domain name works the same way. "portmint.com" is the friendly contact name. The real "number" is the address of the server holding the site. You type the name, and a quiet lookup swaps it for the number, then connects you. The name is for humans; the number is for machines.

The internet's phone book

How does the name turn into a number? There's a giant, shared directory for exactly this — think of it as the internet's phone book. When you type a domain, your browser quietly asks this directory, "what's the number for this name?" The directory answers, and now your browser knows which server to knock on.

This happens in a blink, every time, before the page even starts loading. You never see it. But it's the reason you can type a handful of words instead of a long string of digits — the phone book does the translating in the background.

Getting your own name

A domain name isn't bought once and owned forever; it's registered — rented year by year through a company that sells names and records who holds which one. Pick a name nobody else has taken, pay a yearly fee, and it's yours to point at your server. Let the rental lapse, and the name goes back on the market.

Pointing the name at your server is the last knot to tie: you tell the phone book, "when someone asks for my name, send them to this server." From then on, your friendly name leads straight to your site's home.

When Portmint sets up a business's site, this is part of the handoff — wiring the company's chosen domain to the server holding their page, so customers reach it by a name that's unmistakably theirs.

Your turn

Look at the address bar above. The words there are a domain name. Somewhere, the internet's phone book quietly turned those words into a number and led you to a server — all before this page appeared. You never noticed, and that's the point.

We have a name pointing at a living server. Now let's put it all together and actually publish. Next: the act of taking a site live. 🔦