My Analogy about Domain & Hosting
This is a basic explanation regarding domain and hosting, and I will come up with my favorit analogy along with it.
Domain is a name for your website, this name is registered neatly so there will be unique, one for each website. The purpose of domain is to call the presentation of a web page to be viewed through your web browser. And the page you are seeing like this one, is actually generated by a series of html and/or web programming.
And where does all of those files containing the program is being stored? This is where the hosting service is take part. In order to provide accessibility for your files (which generate the web page) a web server with online connectivity to the internet is a must. Because internet access provide the neccesary connection to call the procedure to view a web page.
- Image via Wikipedia
Basically, a hosting (web server) has an addressing protocol known as the Internet Protocol (IP address). This address is also unique for each machine that is connected to the internet. For example:
yahoo.com is addressed at 68.180.206.184 the IP address is the machine (web server) address, and since it is a lot of effort to memorize an IP address, domain took the place of addressing format. Isn’t it a lot easier to remember “yahoo.com” instead of “68.180.206.184″
Here is an analogy for the situation:
Mr. Ali has a house. Okay, the address is:
48th Street
Apartment G, No. 5
Hold’em City
Texas State
(this could go further.. bla-bla-bla and so on)
Now, don’t you think it’s easier to say “Mr. Ali’s house” than the actual address? That’s how domain works for simplify the web server address.
Now the hosting is like the Mr. Ali’s apartment building. It’s the physical structure that holds the interior, the funiture, the painting on the wall etc. So when you get to Mr. Ali’s house you can see the room he’s been living and his favorit painting on the wall. And that’s how you access a web page, you go to the address and see the presentation.
But then again, a web server can hold more than one domain, so don’t be surprised if you try to ping a domain resulting a same result with other domain’s IP address. Because this is possible. Just like Mr. Ali’s appartment, which can hold more than one occupant.
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I like this analogy. the domain name is the address, while the hosting is the physical location. Excellent explanation for those who aren’t very web design savvy.
glad you found it acceptable, I used it quite often actually.. did some workshop which discuss about internet and it’s usage for commoners.
Nice breakdown for beginners. Thinking of it in these terms should make things much clearer for newbies.
haha very good explanation on domains and hosting for those who dont understand the difference. it would be nice if you then went into detail on the different hosting services out there (whos good/bad, ect).
A residential address and a web address are a lot similar…both are unique.
Like a residential address has person’s name,street and place,a typical web address has domain,path and file name,which helps to retrieve the information.
wow..thanks for that wonderful info nich…I heard that GoDaddy is the favorite of many people :)
Well, most of the domain buyers go to godaddy. Thanks for this admirable work, Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
Wonderful