I hope you enjoyed the last post and have been practicing your cPanel skills.

Today I am going to go over the basics of pointing your domain to your webhost, which is necessary for your domain to be visible on the web.

If you spend any time on the Internet sending e-mail or browsing the Web, then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet, and they are fascinating. The DNS system forms one of the largest and most active distributed databases on the planet. Without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly.

When you use the Internet or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL “http://www.ron-barrett.com” contains the domain name ron-barrett.com. So does the e-mail address “ron @ ron-barrett.com.”

Human-readable names like “ron-barrett.com” are easy for people to remember, but they don’t do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another and domains use DNS servers.

Here are the steps in order to point your domain to your web host.

Step 1) Log into your domain registrar.

Step 2) Select the domain you want to point to your web host.

Step 3) Look for a setting called “Nameserver” or “DNS Settings”. The following are nameservers for Dreamhost.com

dns

Step 4) Enter in your two DNS addresses in the appropriate fields. If you don’t know your DNS addresses, contact your webhost. They should have provided this information when you registered.

Step 5) Save changes.

The DNS, or Domain Name System is a huge database that stores all information communications that exist on the Internet. In fact, it is the largest database in the world. One person browsing the web can complete hundreds of DNS entries per day, depending on how many times they click on something or how much information they transmit online. The DNS server is huge, and each DNS entry relates to an individual domain name, which is why domain name registration is so important.

Each computer or device that is connected to the internet has an identifying IP address. The IP address is important since this is how the DNS recognizes which location is collecting or transmitting information across the World Wide Web.

When someone types the full URL (http://www.blahblah. com) or web address (www.whatever. com) into the address bar of their browser, the domain name and host name is converted to an IP address, so that the browser knows to direct the user to that web page. The browser actually has a virtual conversation of sorts with the domain name’s server. On some computer and Internet systems, the DNS is transmitted to the machine’s memory once you connect to your Internet Service Provider (or ISP). Some machines are actually hard wired to read the DNS and know how to talk to the domain server via the operating system. What basically happens is that the browser contacts the server and asks it to convert the domain into an IP address. Once this happens, the browser converts it over to the website, allowing the user to see it on their PC.

Some servers search for an IP address by looking for the root name server. These root servers know about the IP address already, and know what servers it handles under the top level, or main domains. Once that happens the server asks the root director for the website. It is essential that you’ve already created a master domain, had it registered, and created the root directory so that the domain name knows to go directly to your web host’s server. Registering and creating a domain name is essential to ensuring that the host communication is performed properly.

Each web hosting server can have several physical PCs or computers that each have their own IP address, and this can make up the entire server infrastructure. There can be nicknames, or aliases for the hosts which all point to the actual, physical machine. There can also be a nickname or alias for different websites that point to the master domain. This can go on and on, depending on the root directory and how many name servers there are. In effect, they can all point back to the main domain name in some way or another. It’s important to remember that the DNS can handle millions of transactions every minute of every day. Knowing how the DNS operates is helpful when learning how to make sure your domain name points back to the host or server.

Be sure your website has a good root directory that knows where its origins are. This means that any information using the DNS will ultimately point the user or person visiting the website right back to the web host. In return, you are able to better track where your visitors are coming from, what they are looking at, and how information is being transmitted from your website to the web hosting server and then back again. The DNS is the world’s largest database and is constantly changing, but with a good root directory or name server, all URL hits will bring everything back to the origin of the site, which is the host.

I have one more post coming up and that will do it for the Webhosting for Newbies series.

See you then.

Ron

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