Wirebook › Glossary › Domain name
What is a domain name?
In one sentence: The name part of a web address, like example.com, that a person or company owns. In a link, the owner is the part just before the first single slash.
A little more
A domain name is the human-friendly name of a website, such as example.com or a school's name ending in .sch.uk. Someone registers and owns it, and DNS turns it into the number of the computer that answers.
Anyone can put any words in front of their own domain (secure.bank.com.trick.example is owned by trick.example), so to find the real owner of a link you read the host from the right-hand end. Look-alike names, like a 1 instead of an l, are a favourite trick of fake messages.
It's a bit like… The name on a front door: the house number tells the postie where to go, and only one family owns that name plate.
See it in action
- 16How can you spot a fake message?Sort a pretend inbox of real and sneaky fake messages from games, banks, parcels and friends.7 min · interactive
- 2Anatomy of a web addressPaste any web address and see it taken apart, colour by colour: scheme, host, port, path, query and the fragment that never reaches the server.5 min · interactive