buying a domain

[Tomy]

what the hell am I doing?

just need a domain at the moment. prefer it to be on the cheap but have the space to expand the website later on down the track.

help, i have no idea what to look for, cheers.

[CBG]

shit. i have the perfect website man. me and jimmyj use it, ill find out what it is and msg u later tonight

[Tomy]

cheers man, any other advice from any one who's bought one before would be good. ie: things to look out for and all that.

[Cupe]

Buy a domain from sitelutions.com

Then later on when you get webspace just buy from someone else and aim the domain there

Ask any questions, I deal with this sort of shit almost every week

[Tomy]

so if i'm buying the domian i;m not actually buying the space on the web just the "something.com"

[Cupe]

that's right

then you edit settings on the domain to point to particular webspace once you have a site built

That's how ADJF works

[awesome88]

lol i'd have no hope with something like this. Big ups for running this cupe... are you in IT?

[Cupe]

nope, self taught

[lloydc]

I went with crazydomains.com.au for our webhosting.

you can buy.com domains there for $9 at the moment too

bargain

[Cupe]

yea sitelutions is about the same price

I tend not to purchase anything from companies with the word 'crazy' in their name

but i've got domains from sitelutions for years and years now so just used to it

anyway, main point is you can get sorted with a domain for under 10 bucks a year

then when you're ready you can fork out for webspace with someone and aim your domain to that webspace

book shakalakah you got a website

[awesome88]

why do you need to buy a name? and buy webspace? who owns it?

[Cupe]

huh?

Please elaborate

[awesome88]

like... why can't you just make a website and put it out there? why do you have to use a website like sitelutions to make a www.awesome88.com, then another website for space..

... like, who own the cyberspace?

i'm being for realz, i have no idea about this shit

[Cupe]

like... why can't you just make a website and put it out there? why do you have to use a website like sitelutions to make a www.awesome88.com, then another website for space..

... like, who own the cyberspace?

i'm being for realz, i have no idea about this shit

Well you can buy webspace on sitelutions, but they're not Australian (slow response times, not the best price etc)

Tomy just wanted a domain for now

You can go to the same company and buy both a domain AND webspace from them and just get setup entirely through the one company.

I suggested sitelutions because i know they sell domains for like 8 bucks and later when he wants a site he can get webspace from whoever he wants.

As to who owns the webspace, it depends. there's alot of onselling, but whatever. whoever you buy it from owns it

[Cupe]

http://www.chombo.com.au/

Good Australian company, owned by a mate of mine

[lloydc]

like... why can't you just make a website and put it out there? why do you have to use a website like sitelutions to make a www.awesome88.com, then another website for space..

... like, who own the cyberspace?

i'm being for realz, i have no idea about this shit

the domain name just redirects to where you want it to go, it's just to make it easier for people to remember your site address, rather than something like http://awesome88.randomhostsite.com

you can redirect to your blog or what ever you have.

the advantage of having seperate webhosting is that you can store anything you want online, create subdomains, email addresses etc.... essentially it means have more freedom with your site.

can be a little hard to get your head around at first, but ask away cause there are a few people here that have experience with this kinda thing.

[chrismak]

why do you need to buy a name? and buy webspace? who owns it?

A domain name is like a postal address alias. You're essentially paying for registration and the ongoing maintenance of the IT infrastructure that allows it to operate on the internet.

Webspace is like a virtual workplace. It contains the IT infrastructure required to store and operate your website.

Many companies offer domain name and webspace hosting, so many different companies own it.

You can do without a domain name, but people will have to enter your webserver IP to access the website.

You can do without external webhosting and host it from home, but you will not have the expensive infrastructure required to efficiently manage more than a few users using your website at once.

[Cupe]

the domain name just redirects to where you want it to go, it's just to make it easier for people to remember your site address, rather than something like http://awesome88.randomhostsite.com

It's more often that the original address is an allocated IP on the webserver

http://234.66.34.156/

A domain is basically like, getting www.smellmyfist.com and making it redirect to http://234.66.34.156/

It replaces the allocated IP slot on the webserver with an easy to remember web address

[awesome88]

aha... so you are paying someone to maintain the data you have on your site, and so no one else can have that name etc?

[Cupe]

well once you buy a URL it's yours until it expires

and when you buy webspace, its just someone hosting the data/site for you on the internet 24/7

they don't do anything but provide a machine that hosts it. you do all the work on the website etc.

they just have huge rooms (datacentres) filled with servers that have allocated sections on their hdd's to host peoples websites

so you might have http://123 and the next guy has http://124

and you buy awesome88.com and direct it to http://123 and old mate buys pooltoys.com and directs it to http://124

[Cupe]

Domain name Servers (DNS) are an important but invisible part of the internet, and form one of the largest databases on it. Each machine on an internet is assigned a unique address, called an IP address, which is 32 bit number and is expressed as 4 octets. The method user to represent these IP addresses is known as dotted decimal Notation". A typical address looks like this: 199.249.150.4

It is very difficult to keep in mind the IP addresses of all the websites we visit daily, because it's not easy to remember strings of numbers. However, we do remember words. This is where domain names come into the picture. If you want to connect to a particular site, you need to know its IP address but do need to know its URL. The DNS gets the mappings of the IP addresses and the corresponding names.

Names and numbers

DNS converts the machine names (such as www.xyz.com) to IP addresses (such as 199.249.150.9). Basically, it translates from a name to an address and from an address to a name.

The mapping from the IP address to the machine name is called reverse mapping .when you type http://www.xyz.com into your browser, the browser first needs to get the IP address of www.xyz.com. The machine uses a directory service to look up IP addresses and this service is called DNS. When you type www.xyz.com your machines firsts contacts a DNS server, asking it to find the IP address for www.xyz.com. This DNS server might then contact other DNS servers on the internet. DNS is therefore is considered as the global network of servers. The great advantage of DNS is that no organization is responsible for updating it. It is what is known as distributed database.

The three letter codes

A DNS server is just a computer that's running the DNS software. The most popular DNS software is BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) DNS is hierarchical, tree-structured system. The top is donated by'.'. And is known as the root of the system. Below the root there are seven immediate sub domain nodes and these are 'com', 'org', 'gov', 'mil', 'net', 'edu', 'Int', etc.

DNS consists of two components

* Nameserver

* Resolver

Nameserver:

This performs the task of looking up the names. Usually, there is one nameserver for a cluster of machines. If the nameserver does not contain the requested information, it will contact another nameserver. But it is not required for every server to know how to contact every other server. Every nameserver will know how to contact the root nameserver, and this in turn will know the location of every authoritative nameserver for all the second level domains.

Resolver:

This runs on a client machine to initiate DNS lookups. It contains a list of nameservers to use. As we have read, the function of each of these nameservers is to resolve name queries. There are three types of nameservers-primary nameserver, secondary nameserver, and caching nameserver. The secondary nameservers are configured for backup purposes. Caching nameservers only resolve name queries but do not maintain any DNS database files. It is important to note here that any change to primary nameservers needs to be propagated to secondary nameservers. This is because primary nameservers own the database records. The changes are propagated via a 'zone transfer'.

HOW "CACHING"WORKS

DNS uses principle of 'caching' for its operation. When a nameservers receives Information about a mapping, it caches this information .further queries for the same mapping will use this cached result, thereby reducing the search cost. The nameservers don't cache forever. The caching has a component called time to live (TTL) and the TTL determines how long a server will cache a piece of information. So when the nameservers caches receive an IP address, it receives the TTL with it. The nameserver caches the IP address for the period of time then discards it.

When a process needs to determine an IP address given a DNS address, it calls upon the local host to resolve the address. This can be done in variety of ways:

Table look up. On UNIX hosts, the table is /etc/hosts.

The process communicates with a local nameservers. This is named on a UNIX system.

By sending a massage to the remote system that is identified from the information in the file/etc/resolve.conf.

When a nameserver receives a query for a domain that is does not serve, it may send back a referral to the client by specifying better nameservers. Typically operate in the recursive manner wherein any DNS server passes requests it cannot handle to higher level server and so on, until either the request can be handled or until the root of the DNS name space is reached.

The nameservers contain pointers to other nameserver with the help of which it is possible to traverse the entire domain naming hierarchy. A host with the initial nameserver addresses has to be configured. After this, it is able to use DNS protocols to locate the nameserver responsible for any part or the DNS naming hierarchy.

Thus when a nameserver receives a request, it can do one of the following:

It can answer the request with an IP address. This method is called iterative. In this, the client simply asks the server to resolve a domain name. The server accesses its database, finds its IP address and sends that back. If the server does not find the address, it sends back an error ;DNS not found'). Contact another nameserver and try to find the IP address for the requested name. Send back a referral to the client specifying the IP address of better nameservers.

A popular user interface, called 'nslookup'is available on the UNIX system. With this, you can perform any DNS function. This program also displays the result to the user. Using is nslookup, you can obtain a listing of all the hosts in a zone. In order to do this, you first need to identify the nameserver for the zone.

The threats that are associated with the DNS are due to the lack of integrity and authenticity checking of the data held within the DNS. Also, other protocols can use host names as an access control mechanism. The internet engineering task force (IETF) has come up with DNS security (DNSSEC) extensions to DNS protocol. The main objective to DNSSEC is to provide authentication and integrity to the DNS. These are provided through the use of cryptographic'

[Cupe]

How it Web hosting works:

1. You register a domain name. For example: yahoo.com. This is done through a domain registrar. The domain is a legal entity you lease.

2. You set the domain’s DNS information.

DNS is an acronym for domain name server. The DNS record is in this format:

ns1.prattinternet.com - 207.44.188.108

ns2.prattinternet.com - 207.44.189.249

Where ns1 is the primary name server 1 and ns2 is the secondary name server. Notice that there is IP information for each name server. Generally all you have to enter is the name server information which automatically correlates to the IP information.

Purpose: The purpose of doing this is to associate the domain name with the hosting server. Each hosting server has it’s own DNS information.

3. Someone accesses your site.

A. They open a Web browser and type in the domain name.

B. The browser requests the web page from your computer’s preferred DNS server by asking if it knows the IP address associated with the domain name. This is the hosting server where the site files reside.

C. The preferred DNS server will either have the IP address or look it up. It does this by querying a “whois” database for the primary DNS associated with the domain name of the site. This gives the browser information about the IP address where the site is hosted.

D. Once it has the IP address of the hosting server, the browser makes a request directly to the hosting server for the page and the page is sent to the browser where it is viewed by your visitor.

[lloydc]

the domain name just redirects to where you want it to go, it's just to make it easier for people to remember your site address, rather than something like http://awesome88.randomhostsite.com

It's more often that the original address is an allocated IP on the webserver

http://234.66.34.156/

A domain is basically like, getting www.smellmyfist.com and making it redirect to http://234.66.34.156/

It replaces the allocated IP slot on the webserver with an easy to remember web address

yeah, i know... but there was no need to confuse the poor bloke even further.

[Cupe]

My new posts should explain better

[Cupe]

Step one is getting a domain name. You know, it’s the address for the website, like agencybyte.com.

To purchase a domain name we’ll need to use a registrar. Register.com and GoDaddy are two common registrars who have permission from ICANN to sell domain names.

Pricing for domain names is all over the map, from a few bucks to fifty dollars or more. Registrars all sell the exact same domain names so the only difference between them is the service they offer. It’s kind of like buying airfare from Expedia, Travelocity, or Orbitz. They’ll all sell you the same Delta flight but prices might vary and the extra services they offer might vary too. In the end, though, you’ll still be sitting in the same cramped seat on the exact same Delta flight regardless of who sells you the ticket.

Speaking of extra services a registrar might offer, be aware that you don’t actually need any of their services no matter how critical they may make it sound. Because domain name reselling is a lower-margin business than it used to be, upselling you on other stuff is their main game now. If in doubt, just buy the domain name.

We need to explain one more important thing about domain names before we move on. Every computer on the Internet has a unique number. It’s called an IP address. It’s like a phone number for each computer. That’s oversimplified, but it works for our purposes. A domain name is like an alias for that IP address…a more memorable way of identifying a computer on the Internet.

So…when you type in agencybyte.com that’s just an easier way of getting to my blog than remembering the IP address (70.87.126.226). Again, this is somewhat simplified, but that’s the goal right? To make this stuff easier to digest?

Nameservers (or DNS)

Step two is setting up nameservers or DNS for our newly-purchased domain name.

DNS is a commonly used acronym which, depending on context can mean Domain Name System or Domain Name Servers. Can you use it in a sentence, please? Sure…people usually say something like, “I need to setup DNS for my new domain name.” Or, they may ask, “What are the nameservers for our new domain?”

DNS is the least tangible and typically hardest part of the whole website setup process for people to understand so I’ll try to make it really simple.

Remember how the domain name (agencybyte.com) is like an alias for the IP address (70.87.126.226) of my blog? Well, someone has to keep track of that information. Someone has to be in charge of saying that agencybyte.com should “point” to 70.87.126.226. This is where DNS comes in.

Quite often the same company who sells you your domain name will also maintain this information but there are also companies who specialize in providing DNS services, such as EveryDNS.net. They have domain name servers, which are computers that keep track of all of this and are in charge of telling everyone that our new domain name goes to the IP address of the computer which has our new website hosted on it.

Makes sense right? Our new website won’t be hosted or stored on the same computers as, say, Apple’s website right? So there needs to be a way for domain names to take us to the right computers when we type them into our web browsers.

Now that we’ve mentioned that our website’s files won’t be on the same computer as apple.com or agencybyte.com, we’d better talk about where our website will be hosted.

Hosting

So at this stage we have a domain name and we also have domain name servers making sure that our domain name is properly routing visitors to our website when they type in the domain name.

Our actual website is just a bunch of files. HTML files, CSS files (stylesheets), images and photos, etc. All of these files need to be in a folder on a computer that is connected to the Internet. That computer is usually called a “server” because it serves up our website files when people come to visit. When you pay a company to put your files on their web server, you’re buying hosting. They are hosting your website on their servers.

So now that we have it all setup, here’s what happens when you visit the new website.

You type the domain name into your web browser. The DNS makes sure you get connected to the right computer. And that computer or server has your website files hosted on it. Let’s look at a diagram to make sure this all clicks in your head.