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“Domain Name” – Your Online Identity
 Sally Bartlett
What is a domain name? It is a specific address on the World Wide Web (WWW) that belongs to a specific individual, organization, company or group. It is formed by rules and regulations of the Domain Name System (DNS), represents a personal computer, a website or a host server, and will carry Internet Protocol (IP) identification.
Anyone can make a domain purchase. After you have decided what name you would like to own you must find out if it is available. A typical domain address will look like this: www.mydomain.com. The hierarchy goes from right to left with the 3 letters after the dot the "domain" or top-level domain and each part or label in front of it a subdivision or subdomain. There were only seven top-level domain three-letter initials back in the 1980s. They were: GOV, EDU, COM, MIL, ORG, NET, and INT. With the growth and popularity of the internet, it became necessary to add more identifiers, and in 2009 there were 21 top-level domain names and 250 two-letter country names also being used. Today, there are an incredible 215 million domain names worldwide.
Getting your first choice of a name today may be difficult. A person named Cindy Lou setting up a flower-selling website may want to use the name www.buyflowers.com, or www.ihaveflowers.com or www.flowersrus.com. Go Daddy's website and domain seller says they are all unavailable – but if she wants www.cindylousflowers.com it is available for $9.99 a year. When you decide to actually make a domain purchase, the seller will give you all kinds of other options: buy additional top-level domains to prevent the competition from taking them; buy different privacy packages; add a number of email addresses; or purchase website hosting.
After you have made your personal domain purchase, anyone with internet access can type your online identity into their web browser and visit your website!
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