What is a domain name?

This website is www.independentwebadvice.co.uk so the independentwebadvice.co.uk part is the domain name.

The www. part indicates that you want pages located on the world wide web.

Using mail. in front of the domain usually gives access to mail servers.

using ftp. in front of the domain usually give you access to upload files to the servers.

Using a mailbox name with an '@' sign gives you access to someones mail box. For instance contact@ followed by a domain name will give you access to a 'contact' mail box, at least in order to add files to it.

The domain extension is the .co.uk part. There are many extensions and they were supposed to mean different things. For instance .com was meant as a reference to an American company, although this has developed into simply a worldwide address for a website. The extension .co.uk was supposed to indicate an English company, .org an organisation, .net a network provider, .tv a television company etc etc. However these meanings have pretty much fallen by the wayside, although many extensions such as .edu or .mil still have restricted use.

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