When you’re just getting started on your entrepreneurial journey, it’s likely you’re going to want to do everything yourself. This can get a little confusing, especially if you’re trying to build your own website.
But, making your own website isn’t as difficult as you think. Most of the things that you need to know can be learned pretty quickly online, even if you have very little knowledge.
One common part of setting your own website that confused people is registered a domain name. Although you can find some cheap domain names out there – see Spacehop’s Guide to find one – there’s a common question that many people have with domain names.
What’s the difference between a domain name, and a URL? How are they different from one another, and what do they both mean? Well, fortunately, the answer to this is actually pretty simple, and there’s an easy explanation to this question. So, let’s find out how a domain name differs from a URL.
Domain vs URL – What’s the difference?
The difference between a domain name and a URL is that the domain only refers to the first part of the address, which the URL will refer to a full page on the website.
Here’s an easy to understand example of what I mean. The domain name is simply the .com alone.
entrepreneurshipinabox.com
This is the domain name. You’ll need to register one of these if you want to build your own website, and it’s just one webpage (we call that the homepage of the website).
But when you’re writing new content to add to your website, then obviously you’ll want to add that to another page on your website, not the same page. This is when URL’s come in, or inner pages.
So, say for example I made a blog post about Jeff Bezos. Then, that would come after the domain name, and they would together form the URL.
entrepreneurshipinabox.com/jeff-bezos
So, we refer to all of this as the URL, which actually still includes the domain name as well.
Whilst the domain is just the first bit alone, the URL is the whole address of the page itself.
Who owns a domain name?
Different people will own different domain names around the world. You can register your domain name, and from them on if you want to keep it you’ll have to pay a yearly fee for it. Don’t worry, it’s not too much and most domains cost $8-20 on a yearly basis for you to renew them.
In some cases, you can actually search online and find out who owns a domain name. But often, the owner of the domain name can pay an additional fee to stop anyone seeing that they’re the owner of that domain, and you won’t be able to find out who owns the domain itself.
How do I permanently buy a domain name?
The bad news is that it’s impossible for anyone to permanently own a domain name. The good news is that you can renew your domain name pretty easily, and you can even do this 10 years in advance. You’ll want to make sure that renews your domain name before it expires each year, otherwise, you could end up paying a lot of money to get it back.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a URL will always contain the domain name in it, but a domain name is only one and it’s the sole homepage of your website. You need to pay a fee for the domain name, but once you own it you can add as many pages as you want to your website.
