To have a functional website, you need to build yourself a website, then give the site a domain name and find a web host to store the website. What is a domain name? How does a domain name work? How to register a domain name of your own? These are the very basic questions, new webmasters should ask themselves before starting their websites and online business.
What’s a domain name?
A domain name is essentially an Internet address through which visitors can find your website. Just imagine your website as a house, the domain name is the address of your house. A domain name represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource. Unlike an IP address, Domain names serve as more easily memorable names for users. Domain names come with different extensions, prominent domain extensions are com, info, net, edu, org, etc.
How Does a Domain Name Work?
Domain names or simply domains as many people use is the alphabetic address of your website. Your visitors use their web browsers to access and display your web pages. However computers do not recognize the letters actually. A domain name needs to be translated into numbers before they can be understood by computers. Domain name system (DNS) is such a system on the web to translate all kinds of domain names into IP addresses. It is the IP address which leads your visitors to the right web server with your website files stored.
How to Register a Domain Name?
To build a website and put it online, you need to register a domain and find a host. Some hosting companies provide both domain registration and website hosting service, like BlueHost, HostGator, Arvixe, Justhost. And so do some domain registrars, such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions.
GoDaddy is the most famous domain registrar in the world, to buy a domain with them, you can click link below:
>> Register a domain with GoDaddy. 
A domain name is very important to the success of your website. There are some guidelines you should follow when choosing a domain name. See: 10 Best Tips to Choose a Good Domain Name.
What are Domain Name Servers (DNS)?
As we have talked about above, the Domain Name System interprets domains names into server IP addresses. DNS is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. If you buy hosting server and domain name separately from a host and registrar, you need to update the domain name servers manually. Contact your webhosting for the domain name servers (DNS servers), once you get the name servers, go to change the default name servers with your registrar. Here for convenience, let’s take GoDaddy as the example. You can follow the steps to Change Name Servers with GoDaddy. Your domain registrar should have the domain management tool for you to update the domain name servers, DNS records or even transfer the domain name out to another registrar. See this guide if you want to set up DNS Records with GoDaddy. The change of domain name servers is pretty easy and takes a few minutes. If you do not want to change the domain name servers by yourself, contact your webmaster or your domain registrar. Please be cautious with domain name server change, as once you changed the DNS servers, it might take from 24 to 72 hours for the change to take effect, which also called DNS propagation period.
What’s a sub domain and the difference between Domain and Sub Domain Name?
Any Domain name can be subdivided into smaller units called Sub domains. For example, if your domain is betterhostreview.com and your direct it to your main business online. Later you recognized that it might be helpful to create a user forum, and you do not want to register another domain. Under such circumstances, you can simply create a sub domain like forum.betterhostreview.com or discussion.betterhostreivew.com. Sub domains are part of the main domain name they don’t need to be registered as they belong to the same owner as the main domain name.
Many web hosts allow you to create sub domains in their hosting control panel. The creation and setup of sub domains are very easy. And best of all, you can create and host additional websites with sub domain names without extra fees.
