There's a lot of confusion about domains; in particular many people think a domain and a website are more or less the same thing. If you've read our page about domains, you know that the Web uses domains, but a domain itself is something that doesn't involve the Web.

A domain name is just a "family name" for computers.

If that statement doesn't make any sense to you, please read our page about domains. Come back here when you really understand what a domain is.
 

So now you know a domain is just a family name for naming computers, including the computers running Web servers, handling email, and anything else.

Obviously, just registering a domain name doesn't get you computers to name any more than just having a family name gets you children to name. If you want a family for your family name, you need a spouse and/or some kids.

Luckily, you do not need your own computer and server on the Internet to use your domain for your Website, but ... well, this gets a little complicated, so let's take it slow.

You can have a Website without having a domain, and you can have a domain without having a Website.

The most comon use for having your own domain without a Website is to have an email address related to your business rather than to your Internet provider. Fred Smith, who has a side business making handcrafted beerkegs, might register domain beerkeg.com so he can be fred@beerkeg.com instead of fred@netheaven.com.
 

To have a Website without having a domain, you put your Website on someone else's server. Their server will have a name in their domain, or one of their domains if they have more than one. Personal Websites are usually on your Internet provider's server. Small business Websites may be on the provider's server or on the server of a company in the business of selling Webites.

When your Website is part of someone else's server, your URL needs something at the end to denote which part of their server. Fred could simply put his beerkeg Website on our server as a personal Website, giving Fred a URL like

http://www.netheaven.com/~fred

There's an obvious disadvantage: how in the world would people ever find his beerkeg site? Fred's trying to run a business.

One thing he can do that will help a little is become a Commercial.Com member. Then he can have the URL

http://www.webaddrs.com/beerkeg

This gets his business name "beerkeg" into his URL, it gets us out of his way, it looks more businesslike, and it's free.

If Fred has already publicized the "~fred" URL, that effort isn't lost, because for Commercial.Com members both URLs are valid. He would gain a new URL without losing his old one.
 

Fred really wants his own domain, beerkeg.com, and he wants his Website to be at www.beerkeg.com. In other words he wants the computer his Website is on to have that name.

He could, of course, go the big-business route and buy a computer and full-time network connection for it, but making his beerkegs is just a small business. Fred can't afford a real Web server of his own.

Fred can still use the name www.beerkeg.com for the computer his Website is on, because computers can have more than one name, just as people can. Fred can give the name www.beerkeg.com to whatever computer his Website is on.

In other words, Fred can make www.beerkeg.com be an additional name for www.webaddrs.com. He still doesn't own it though, and his Website is still not the default Website on the server. His URL specifies what part of the server has his Website with a "/beerkeg" at the end:

http://www.beerkeg.com/beerkeg

Because www.beerkeg.com would be just another name for www.webaddrs.com, these two URLs would be equivalent: http://www.beerkeg.com http://www.webaddrs.com

If Fred's prospective client looking for Fred's Website leaves the "/beerkeg" off Fred's URL, he or she won't get Fred's site. They will get the Commercial.Com main page, even though they used Fred's domain in the URL.

In other words, a URL with Fred's domain in it can reference someone else's Website. Some providers would implement Fred's server by making www.beerkeg.com be an additional name for their own server. Fred's client forgetting the "/beerkeg" would get the provider's server advertising the provider.

One purpose of Commercial.Com is so that this doesn't happen to NetHeaven members. The Commercial.Com page is just a list of businesses, and the list would include Fred's beerkeg business, with a link to his URL.

This is roughly similar to an office being in an office building with a number of other tenants. The "/beerkeg" is like a suite number specifying which part of the shared building houses a business.

Website with domain with virtual server

Having your own server is like having your own building. With your own building you don't need a suite number in your address, and with his own server Fred's URL wouldn't need the "/beerkeg" at the end: http://www.beerkeg.com

This URL make Fred's beerkeg business look like a prosperous company big enough to afford its own server and network connection. It's an image thing.

You don't need a real server. This can be done with a pretend server called a virtual server. There are two kinds.  A conventional or IP-based virtual server works with any browser.  A name-based virtual server works with nearly all browsers in common use on the Internet these days but not with some older browsers.

A name-based virtual server is free with our Standard Membership.  An IP-based virtual server is included with our Premium Membership.  Both memberships include the domain services needed for either kind of virtual server.

For more information on virtual servers, especially the newer "name-based" kind, see our separate page on virtual servers.

How a virtual server is done

Remember that computers use numbers (IP addresses) to refer to each other whereas people like to use names? Well, when we say www.beerkeg.com and www.webaddrs.com are both names for the same computer, what we really mean is that they're both names for the same number - for the same IP address.

These days some computers are able to respond to more than one number. In other words, one computer can pretend it is multiple computers. The Web server on such a computer can respond differently to queries sent to different IP addresses.

In this way, a single computer with a single Web server can pretend to be multiple computers, each running a different Web server. When you have an IP-based virtual server, we make your site be the default site for a pretend computer at your server's IP address.

A browser looks up the IP address of the server and sends its request to that address. Old browsers expect that there's only one Website at the IP address, so they ask for "the" site. New browsers speaking version 1.1 of the Web protocol specify the site they want by name, allowing the server to respond based on the name asked for instead of just the IP address the request was sent to.