Why does your website end in .online instead of .com?
When I started this blog a year ago, I had some important decisions to make. I needed to come up with a design and a premise. (“Technigal’s Failed Attempts at Cooking” would likely be a flop when compared to the amazing food blogs out there.) I needed to purchase some space on a web server (known as “hosting”) and I needed to decide on a URL.
The URL (or domain name) is the link you used to reach my site. When you type technigal.online, your computer actually queries the string of 1’s and 0’s that identify my web server’s IP address. The internet uses a tool called DNS – or the Domain Name Service – which functions as a phone book for the internet. Just like with a physical address, every part of a domain name plays a role in getting you to the correct location.
For instance:
If you were to type “www.technigal.online”, you would still be routed to my website. The “www” is known as the host and it just lets your computer know that it’s accessing something on the “world wide web”. For a different site, leaving it off it may point you to an intranet or to a different part of the server.
As for the “technigal” portion – that’s the secondary domain name. I could have chosen any name I wanted (as long as it wasn’t already taken.) If you typed a different spelling (like techgal.online) you would not reach my website because the address would not point to this blog.
If you were to type “technigal.com” you would reach a completely different website. While “.com” is the most common top-level domain, it was too expensive for my budget. Other common top-level domains include .edu (for schools), .gov (for US government websites), .org (for nonprofits), and country specific endings. Actually, there are a lot of different top-level domains in existence. For me, “.online” made the most sense (for my pocketbook.)
The full website address is known as the FQDN or “Fully Qualified Domain Name”. My FQDN happens to have a “.online” ending because that’s what I could afford on my tech-hero salary. Thanks to the freedoms of the World Wide Web, someone in Hong Kong was able to purchase the “.com” version of my domain name to resell at a much higher price. Like physical real-estate, cyber addresses are not regulated – so price gouging is common.
One other part of the address to pay attention to is the “HTTP://” or “HTTPS://” portion at the beginning. The addition of the “S” means the website is encrypted or secure. If you ever visit a banking website (or any website that asks for your credentials), you’ll want to make sure that “S” is there – otherwise your data may get stolen.
Oh, and always check the spelling of a link that you type into your browser and report any suspicious links to your local tech-hero.