What is a domain name? A domain name is what you call your website: in my case, it’s beingfreed.com. When you add https:// to the beginning, any web browser will guide you to my website. So, to get to my site you would use https://beingfreed.com. It works just like a street address; you’re just using a search engine instead of GPS.
What is a subdomain name? A subdomain is a domain within a domain. For example, to find my Library, you use https://beingfreed.com/library/. In this case, library/ is the subdomain extension. Continuing with our street address analogy, this is akin to an apartment or suite number.
You may have noticed that some domain names start with www.https:// and some start with www.http://, which does not have the “s”. The “s” indicates that the all of the requests and responses to and from the website are protected with an encryption system. Encryption makes a website more secure, so all the websites I build all include this feature. That’s your chain lock and peephole.
You can buy your domain name from any number of places, often including wherever you host your site. For people who build their own sites, this can be a good option, as your assets will be located all in one place. Fewer accounts means less fuss. I buy domains from Namecheap. I find the site easy to navigate, and managing domains there is straightforward and uncomplicated. I host at SiteGround, but that’s a topic for a different post.
So, what is a domain name? It’s, well, your address.
