hese days, we spend most of our time in the digital world, and we also have our businesses, activities, and even Identities on the internet. One proof of identity is a Web Domain. The Domain is unique and can only be one in the digital world, bringing you to different Top-Level Domains (TLDs). We will talk about it here to walk you through it.
Before we go through it, let’s familiarize ourselves with it first. You may know about this or have heard it, too. Registrars that are famous at the time:
From here on, here are examples of Domains with multiple TLDs.
Alright! The above example will warm us up on our topics.
Let’s break down each part of this article to better understand what, how, and why there is a Registrar, Domain, and DNS.
- Registrar
- Registrar is a company that handles and manages the registration of domain names. Consider this example: that registrar is a civil office that records basically everything about each person. Registrars are capable of:
- Domain Registration
- Here is where Domain registered, bought, sold, auctioned, and managed.
- Domain Availability Check
- Before you can buy your name, you need to check the Domain and make sure it’s available, which is also part of Registrar services.
- Domain Connection
- Here is where the Domain is managed, and we call it the DNS zone, where the registrar helps you connect your Domain to your website.
- Domain Data Updates
- The registrar is also where all your data and ownership of the Domain are recorded. They will be our civil office, ensuring our presence in the digital world.
- Domain Registration
- Registrar is a company that handles and manages the registration of domain names. Consider this example: that registrar is a civil office that records basically everything about each person. Registrars are capable of:
- Domain
- A domain is a unique name that identifies an internet resource, such as a website or email address. As you can see in the example above, we will break it down into each of them.
- The Domain is a name; it’s the address of a website in a human-readable string corresponding to an IP address. To keep it short, Domain makes it easy for humans to remember instead of using IP addresses. for example https://fanaloka.co
- A top-level domain is a domain name after the last “.” For example, fanaloka.co is the top-level Domain, which is .co.
- Second-level domains are domain names before the last “.” or fanaloka.co, of which fanaloka is the Second-Level Domain.
- A Subdomain is an extra, additional domain that is part of the main Domain but serves a different purpose. https://resource.fanaloka.co this Domain, “resource”, represents a sub-domain. This Domain is still owned by Fanaloka, but what is within the Domain itself is most likely different from what is on the main website. Usually, the dev will make staging.fanaloka.co or dev.fanaloka.co to give a space for additional address for development, but this is not tied to only development. Other purpose such as shop.fanaloka.co
- Park Domain is a registered domain but currently doesn’t have a website associated with it. Simply put, you buy it for future needs.
- Country Code Top-Level Domains are a type of Domain that represents a specific geographical location. For example:
- .us stands for the United States of America,
- .id for Indonesia, or
- .uk for the United Kingdom.
- A domain is a unique name that identifies an internet resource, such as a website or email address. As you can see in the example above, we will break it down into each of them.
- Name Server and Domain Name System(DNS)
- A Name Server is a computer application that translates domain names into IP addresses. It is provided by the registrar where you bought your Domain. Another company such as CloudFlare also providing DNS management services.
- Domain Name System, a.k.a DNS, sets all your settings. All website, email, authentication, and redirecting domain settings are set here. In DNS, you will see the following:
- A record is where you put your IP of the website you want to point at.
- AAAA record is same as A record, but here is for IPv6
- CNAME record is used to create an alias. If you are using a third-party Transactional email, most of their settings will be here.
- MX Record This record is a setting for your mail server. Google, Microsoft, or a private mail server must be added here.
- NS Record is a record of your Name Server
- TXT Record is a multi-purpose record. Domain authentication is usually added here, for example, for Google Search Console. They use the TXT Record to ensure that you are the rightful owner of the Domain as well as for SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and so on.
- Time to Live(TTL) is the time for which the DNS will be updated. Simply put, this is like the refresh time of the settings.
This is all for today. It is basic knowledge to make sure you know how Domain, Name Server, and DNS work. We will discuss each setting in depth in another post!
