ArtSites Updates

We were recently asked some questions about domain names that made us think that it would be good to write an article about domain names that was aimed at relatively non-technical people who have websites.

A domain name is a bit of text that is part of something that is often called a link or a web address. A link is text that defines the location of a web page on the internet. When your web browser loads a web page it is actually using a link to identify where that web page lives on the internet and to have a copy of that page transferred to your web browser. A domain name is a part of that link that identifies a specific computer (generally called a server) on the internet where that page lives. Other parts of that link define how the web browser should communicate with that computer and where on that computer the page lives.

Here is an example link that we will break down:

http://artsites.ca/tutorials

The three main components here are http, artsites.ca and /tutorials.

http (sometimes it’s https) is the protocol and defines the technology that is used communicate with the computer that has the web page. If it’s https, that means that the protocol is encrypted and is private. http is not encrypted or private.

artsites.ca is the domain name. It refers to a specific computer somewhere on the internet. The domain name is the part after the :// characters and before the next / character.

/tutorials is called the path and is essentially the name of the web page on that computer. A different path will reference a different web page on that same computer.

Modern web browsers no longer show the http:// or https:// component of a web address in the address bar but it’s still there. If it was https:// you will often see a lock icon and/or a green section in your address bar. Recent version of Safari on Macs, iPhones and iPads no longer show the path part of link in the address bar either so all you actually see is the domain name of the website.

So now that we’ve got a better idea of what the domain name is, let’s look at what’s actually in the domain name itself.

A domain name:

• can only contain letters, number and underscore (_) and must have at least one period (.),
• is case insensitive which means that you could use ArtSites.ca or artsites.ca and they will refer to the same computer,
• web browsers always convert domain names to lower case letters when displaying them in their address bar,
• can contain international characters as well although this can be quite tricky to work with,

Domain names are made up out of two or more components separated by periods. The component on the right, often .com, .ca, .de, .uk, .org, .info, etc., is called the top level domain or TLD. It is kind of a way to group domain names into major categories. Even though the period is not really part of the TLD, it’s often shown to help make it obvious that a TLD is being referred to. The part to the left of that period is the subdomain or second level domain. If there is a second period, the part to the left of that is the third level domain, etc.

Two letter TLDs are all countries although some are for countries that no longer exist (.su for Soviet Union) or entities that are not quite countries (.eu for European Union).

Three and more letter TLDs are for other ways of organization domain names. Originally there were only four of these, .com, .net, .org and .edu and were generally meant for companies (.com), networking equipment or companies (.net), non-profit or not-for-profit organization (.org), and schools and universities (.edu). This has been mostly by convention and not strictly followed.

The second level domain (the component of the domain name to the left of the last period in the domain name) is the bit that you are registering when you register a domain name. Using artistes.ca as an example, we registered artsites with the .ca domain name registry (that organization is call CIRA — Canadian Internet Registration Authority). It’s possible to have third level domain name. These are used in many countries to further segment domains. For instance, in the UK, you could register domain names such as geoffreymeredith.co.uk. In the US, many state organization use this structure. Many US schools use the form schoolname.state.us or even schoolname.k12.state.us (i.e., sfusd.k12.ca.us).

Over the last 10 years or so, a bewildering array of new TLDs have been created so that, as of January 2016, there are over 1200 TLDs that cover all kinds of categorization websites. Some are very open to anyone to register, others are closed to only certain kinds of websites and have strict policies as to how they are used. They also vary a lot in their costs.

Each TLD is administered by a separate organization who is responsible for its rules, technical management, etc. Most of the two letter country TLDs are administered by the associate countries but a few, such as .tv (small Pacific Island country of Tuvalu) have delegated these responsibilities to companies for more commercial purposes. Most of the others are administered by various companies. In general, these companies are not the companies that you go to to register a domain name. Most are companies that you have never heard of and don’t need to know about.

You register domain names with companies that make deals with some or many of these TLD administration organizations. The biggest of these registrars is GoDaddy.com but there are literally thousands of such companies.

It is important to keep in mind that when you register a domain name, you do not own it. You will pay a yearly fee to keep that domain name registered and in some cases will pay an upfront fee to initially register it.

From the perspective of most individuals that have a website, most of these details are not necessary to know or even interesting. What is important is to know that you can choose a TLD that goes along with the name that you want to use for your website. So if your name was Geoffrey Meredith, you might want GeoffreyMeredith.com as the domain name for your website. If you found that someone already had that and/or you wanted to brand yourself as Canadian, GeoffreyMeredith.ca might be the best choice. The same goes for other countries. If you have a very unusual first or last name, it might be possible to use just that part of your name with a TLD. For instance, I have meredith.ca because I registered it a long time ago. It’s extremely rare to find a first or last name with .com anymore. Just yesterday, we talked to a Canadian artist whose first name was available in the .ca TLD.

Another important part of choosing a domain name is what’s called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This refers to how well a domain name will help your web page turn up when searching for specific keywords in a search engine such as Google. If your name is not too common and you have a domain name that contains your first and last name, your website should show up on the first page of results when you search for your first and last name. Often, it will be the first result. But, that will depend a lot on how many others have your name and how high a profile they have. If there is a high profile person with the same or similar name to yours, it can swamp your results and no one will find you in the search engines. In this case, choosing a domain name that is more unique helps. Many artists have a studio name, SwallowdaleStudio.com as an example. Now, the artists that have this website have the last name Smith. That’s a terrible name to attempt to look up in search engines. So, they just chose a more unique name to brand themselves by.

In some cases, it can be enough to add a word like "Art" or "Artist" to a domain name to make it unique in search engines. Many of our artists do this if their name is not unique enough.

Also, keep in mind that it’s not just the domain name that search engines consider when presenting results. It is also the content of web pages that come into play. And mostly, it’s the text content on the web pages. Although, there are a lot of little techniques that can help improve your SEO as well but SEO is another large topic in itself!

If you want to read more about Search Engine Optimization, please feel free to check out our post, How To Get More Traffic from Search Engines - Search Engine Optimization Tips & Techniques.