Technical term
What is a domain?
A term that often comes up when talking about websites and URLs is "domain". A domain can be described as a unique identifier used to point to a specific website on the Internet. It acts as a virtual address that enables users to access a specific website.
Let's use a simple example to illustrate this. Imagine you want to visit a popular travel website called "Travel Norway". To get there, you type "www.reisenorge.no" in your browser. Here, "reisenorge.no" is the domain that identifies the website in question.
A domain consists of several parts that provide more information about the website it represents. Let's take a closer look at the structure of a domain:
- Protocol prefix: "www" is a common abbreviation for "world wide web" and represents the protocol used to access the website. Other protocols may be "ftp://" for file transfer or "http://" for regular web pages.
- Other subdomains: In some cases, a domain can have multiple levels of subdomains. For example, "blogg.reisenorge.no" can be a subdomain for the website "reisenorge.no".
- Domain name: This is the actual name that identifies the website. In our example, "reisenorge" is the domain name.
- Top-level domain (TLD): This is the last part of a domain and indicates the type of organization or geographical location to which the domain belongs. Some common TLDs include ".com" for commercial websites, ".org" for organizations and ".no" for websites in Norway.