Domain Ownership: Your Domain Is A Valuable Business Asset
So, why should domain ownership (=URL) be a fundamental business priority? We see a lot of confusion over domains and their management, including not managing them at all! We want to advocate that business owners prioritize domain ownership here. Often business owners either don’t know where they have registered their domain(s) or worse, they have asked someone else to buy them. In some cases, the affiliated email records are set for the same domain making matters even more difficult.Domains are such valuable business assets we felt compelled to support, so folks understand a little bit more about their domains. In our view and no matter what, you want to be in control of these important business assets. If you allow anyone else to control or own your domain, well then it is NOT really yours … is it?
To begin to understand it really starts with the fact there is a universally accepted need for web standards and organization. Without standards, nothing could ever be done safely or efficiently. So here are a series of definitions to help with any confusion you may have about your domain, which obviously relates to what you do online:
Domain Definitions List
Domain Name
Domains are names associated with a particular IP (i.e. Internet Protocol) address, and that translates to a unique sequence of numbers. To make a physical parallel think of it like this: there’s only one location for 100 Main St. in any given town and one person owns it. On the Internet, the domain name kineticknowledge.com might translate to a unique number sequence like 123.123.123.3 and only we own it. That number is inaccurate, by the way, but the point is … to a browser kineticknowledge.com really looks like a unique set of numbers.
Domain Registrar
Domain registrars are companies authorized to sell domain names available for registration, or better yet … not yet owned by anyone else. GoDaddy and Network Solutions are well-known registrars. They also sell various other services.
Domain Host
GoDaddy & Network Solutions are also domain hosts, meaning they run DNS servers for the organization of registered domain(s). These DNS servers also support a domain owner’s ability to manage different records affiliated with their domains. For instance, a domain name record is an ‘A Name Record’; for subdomains a C Name Record; for email an MX Record and even for text there’s a Text Record. They will also host your website and email for a fee.
DNS
DNS stands for Domain Name System. This ‘system’ is set up to safely organize domains. It’s kind of like the phone book of the web where, when you look for a NAME, that system identifies and then translates it to a ‘number sequence’ you can call. With the help of registrars, the DNS translates a URL or web address (i.e. kineticknowledge.com) to the affiliated IP address, which is also a sequence of numbers (i.e. 123.123.123.3).
MX Records
Your URL or web address can be used for email (i.e. support@kineticknowledge.com). MX (i.e. Mail Exchange) records are DNS settings associated with a domain in order to direct its mail to servers hosting a users’ mail accounts.
And then while we’re at it …
Internet
It’s a network of interconnected computers. Computers worldwide!
Web
It’s an Internet application that supports getting people to websites.
Browser
Is an application for retrieving & presenting specific web pages.
Search Engines
Search Engines constantly crawl and consume all the information on web pages they possibly can, in order to prepare an updated index for when people search. The goal is to help people reach the current information that exists on web pages, as accurately & efficiently as is possible.
