Tagged items are easy to notice and identity. The tags they carry tell us more about them. In blogging, tags can be seen as broader categories to which a post belongs, or in the simplest sense, the main keywords in a post.

Search engines love the title tags. Most web applications and blogging software use the title tags in the title of articles, that’s why it is very important to include keywords in post titles. When a user queries information from the search engines, it is more likely that most of the results will be from articles that have the search trems in their post titles.

In SEO, as important as keywords in post titles are also keywords in urls. Yes, the search engines don’t only look for post titles but they also look at the url of the content. That is why some urls are considered search engine friendly while others are not.

One thing I love very much with wordpress is the ability for a user to decide the exact url of a post. Normally, the url assigned to a post depends strictly on the title you give it. However, this url can be changed by simply clicking on the edit icon next to it and typing a new one.

When assigning a url to a post, I try making it as search engine friendly as possible. Depending very much on keywords in urls make the urls difficult to interpret by humans, but I think that’s OK. Humans should rely on post titles while search engines take care of long and boring urls. Don’t you think so?

A good url should contain major tags from the post content, category under which the post is filed, keywords from the post title, and also any relevant “big term” not mentioned anywhere in the post.

I wish I could call this SEO for Dummies. Ha ha ha. But this really isn’t what the Pros call SEO. We shall be looking at SEO for Dummies in the near future.

Not every human being walking the surface of this planet is blessed with good sight, but should seeing for the “less fortunate” in that aspect cost a fortune? Certainly not. Zenni Optical is out there to ensure that, and they do provide quality eyeglasses at extremely low costs, lower than what you can find in most, if not all places.

In addition to the very low prices, some starting at only $8.00, Zenni Optical also provides some freebies like Anti Scratch coating, UV protection and Lens Edge polishing and Beveling.

Also, in addition to full guarantee, all orders on Zenni Optical, even including the $8.00 Eyeglasses, have have High quality stylish frame, Thin and Light 1.57 index lens, Quality Hard Eyeglass case, Microfiber Lens Cleaning Cloth, plus the three freebies mentioned above.Their shipping rates are very moderate, only $4.95 per order.

Talking of varieties, Zenni Optical faces no problem with that. There, one can find a huge selection to choose from. Wondering why they sell so cheap? I thought you would never ask. They sell only our own manufactured frames direct to the customer, with no middlemen and virtually no advertising budget.

Zenni Optical is very good at its job. Find out what the Chicago Tribune says about it.

Basic Things to Know About Domain Names

Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name

Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog

Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog

I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

Series 3 is named Domain Names and Web Hosting. The first part that we just completed was solely on Domain Names. Now, we are moving forward to Web Hosting. If there is anything I missed out and you would like an explanation or want to request a post, please don’t hessitate to contact me via admin[at]azblogging.com

The second part of this series which we are heading to, begining in the next post, will be very appropriate for those who want to run self hosted blogs. Running a self hosted blog means

• Signing up for a hosting account (free or paid)
• Downloading your blogging software (eg wordpress from wordpress.org)
• Uploading the blogging software to your hosting account (using the in-built file manager on the control panel, or an ftp client (locally installed or remote).
• Configuring a database to work with your blogging software
• Installing the blogging software on your hosting account

Do I still need to talk about domain names and subdomains here? I don’t think so. Just check out the linked posts above.

The steps I just outlined above are too broad. We need to get to the roots. So, I suggest you don’t panic over words like mysql, database, ftp, filemanager, control panel..etc

You will master them when you are done.

BTW: Uncle Che is a little busy for these two months. However, he will try to keep up!

I am very happy that series three is running on smoothly. I have touched the basic things we need to know about domain names. Now, we are on the second part which deals with web hosting and I am very happy to announce that tomorrow, i am taking off with the first post of that second part, An Introduction to Web Hosting.

Before then, I would be very happy if you can check the service I am referring you to so that it eases your understanding of the second part of series two.

Deciding on a web host has never been an easy task. Although there are several hosting rating services out there who are specialized in reviewing and rating Web Hosts, Web Hosting Rating stands out of the crowd in many different ways.

Web Hosting Rating currently has six years of working experience and provide independent customer rating of top 10 web hosting companies. It is not all only about Ratings, reviews and awards. More information on the following are supplied.

1. plans provided by top web hosting providers
2. promotional codes and discount coupons
3. unedited reviews by real customers.

Why should you trust their ratings? As I said earlier, they are “unedited reviews by real customers”.

This service also features great articles that can be of great help to bloggers and webmasters. One of such articles I found was a Cpanel tutorial on Installing and Configuring Fantastico.

Table of contents for Domain Names and Web Hosting

1. Basic Things to Know About Domain Names
2. Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name
3. Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog
4. Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
5. I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

If you recently bought a domain name, I bet you can’t wait to set it up. The excitement is always overwhelming. I too just bought one. No more novicemaster.blogspot.com. Yeah I have it set up at www.novicemaster.com. Doesn’t the later look more professional and poses a higher level of credibility? That is what we have been talking about since this series began.

What is the point here? You probably want

1. your blog to be available via your new domain name
2. your blog to be available via your old domain name
3. visitors that reach your blog via your old domain name to be taken to your new domain name.

There are various means of achieving at least two of the three objectives above, and the method you would chose strictly depends on “the state of your blog” (you will understand what I mean by this in the next few paragraphs).

DNS MANAGEMENT

This is highly recommended for someone who wants to start a self-hosted blog.

Let’s say you want to start up a self hosted blog using Wordpress, for example. Self hosted means you will have to sign up for a hosting account, free or paid. Your host will give you DNS settings (Nameservers) that you would attribute to your domain name through your domain registrar. Most, if not all hosting providers will put a sign next to your addon domain name telling you its DNS status.

Now, add the domain name to your hosting account (as an addon domain, and allow from 24-48 hrs for it to be set up. After that, you are ready to install Wordpress and start blogging. Most hosting providers, if not all, will display a message near your domain name telling you if the nameservers set up are correct. Normally, you need at least two nameservers.

ZONE RECORDS

This method of attributing a domain name for a blog is very important is your blog is remote hosted, ie, hosted by an online service like blogger. If your blog is a .blogspot blog, then using your domain name for your blog would be as easy as just setting up a type of zone record called CNAME. A CNAME is just like “another name for”. If you are using blogspot, the CNAME for blogspot is ghs.google.com. Creating a CNAME for your domain name, in lay terms, means telling your domain name to search blogspot (ghs.google.com) and locate any blog that has your domain name attached to it on the publish settings of the dashboard.

The help section of Google has an extensive article to demonstrate how this is done, using various examples for different domain name registrars. If your domain name registrar is not on that article, I recommend you use this other article compiled by my humble self, which I assume is more general and down to earth.

Do not worry. If properly done, you won’t lose any traffic.

Consider reading the following articles

• AZ – BLOGGING – Using A Custom Domain for Your Blogspot Blog
• BLOGSPOT HELP - How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?
• BLOGSPOT HELP - How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?

URL FORWARDING and REDIRECTION

This method is recommended if you already have a self hosted blog and you do not want to migrate the entire blog to your new domain name. What you actually would have to do is redirect your domain name to the old one. Using an online redirection service is ok, but I will recommend you do it yourself. Placing a file on the root of your blog will do the job. Third will require you to go to the folder in your file manager that has the index file of your blog.

This article provides an easy method to manually redirect one

Table of contents for Domain Names and Web Hosting

1. Basic Things to Know About Domain Names
2. Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name
3. Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog
4. Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
5. I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

Why should I care? Why should I spend numerous hours trying to figure out a so-called appropriate domain name for my blog? It is not worth it. I can just choose any domain name I want to and I will still put up a great blog and drive traffic to it.

Wait a minute. On second thought, everything about my blog starts from a domain name. maybe I should take my time and choose one that can help me in the process of working out some “magic” for my blog

How Important is My Domain Name?

We’ve gone a long way with this series (4th post) an I do believe by now, you should be able to adrress the issue of whether you need a domain name for your blog or not. If you decide you need it, then you also have to consider how important that domain is. If you think you need a domain name but can just go for anyone, then well, the remaining part of this post is not for you. Otherwise, let’s go through a simple tips that can help you choose a domain name.

Choosing a Domanin Name is Not an Easy Task

Azblogging.com sounds very simple and obvious for this blog, but I am sure you will laugh out your lungs if I tell you it took me three days to figure it out. I think I was just lucky having it. Popular opinions hold that all the good names have been taken. This doesn’t stop you from trying, anyway. Let’s roll.

Brand Name or Generic Name?

I think this question is very vital to anyone who wants to choose a new domain name for a blog. You have to first of all decide whether you will like a brand or a generic word as your domain name.

Let me put the above question in a different way. Which do you prefer, Google.com or SearchEngine.com? Technorati.com or BlogSearchEngine.com? Google is a brand name while Searchengine is a generic name.

Whether you decide to use a brand name or a generic name, the characteristics of a good domain name remains the same (though with very confusing exceptions)

Characteristics of a Good Domain Name

Before you choose a domain name for your blog, there three things you should bare at the back of your mind.

A good domain should be Simple, Descriptive and Possessive

One domain name will hardly possess all of the above three characteristics, but why not try to make yours two? Now, let’s go deeper into the three points above.

Simplicity

A simple domain name should be memorable. People should easily be able to remember it next time they want to visit your blog. There are millions of blogs on the blogosphere and I don’t think you will expect everyone to bookmark and favorite all the good blogs they find. To achieve simplicity, make your domain name short.

“Short”, is only one word out of many in the world of domain simplicity. Not every short name is memorable. It has been proven that some acronyms are more difficult to memorize than their full meaning. For example, www.EveryBodyHasTheRightToFight.com is easier to remember than its acronym www.ebhtrtf.com. Watch Out!

Ease of pronunciation also plays a very big role. Most of the time, your site will be recommended to people verbally. If your domain name is difficult to pronounce, people will get it wrongly when transmitted over the phone. Words with pronunciations very similar to others should be avoided.

Spelling matters. Yes! A word might be very short, memorable and easy to pronounce, but is difficult to spell. This can be as a result of it having more than one spelling. If you really need that name, then make sure you buy all the related spellings. www.photosaviour.com (UK) and www.photosavior.com (US) look very alike. I don’t suppose you will go for any (though I own the former, hahahah).

Don’t use hyphens except you are very sure of what you are doing. Hyphens can be used to separate words in long domain names so that they either make sense (forexample WHO REPRESENTS whorepresents.com can be dropped for who-represents.com so that someone doesn’t mistake it for WHORE PRESENTS) or appear easy to read (for example www.everysoldiermustfights.com will be easier to read if it were www.every-soldier-must-fights.com

Description

A descriptive domain name will immediately tell you what the blog is all about. This is true especially for Generic Names. Descriptive domain name usually carry a short description of what the blog is all about, or just simply comprises of a array of keywords separated by hyphens. While it is not yet VERY certain that keywords in domain names do affect search engine ranking, most people prefer staying on the safe side. A descriptive domain name in rare instances can also be a brand name, since some brands do describe their blogs.

Possession

A possessive domain name will immediately tell you who owns it. This is true especially for Brand Names and personal names. With increase in popularity and necessity in of domain names, most people always register their name even if they don’t need it for the moment. Most, if not all brand names are possessive. They immediately tell you the person or institution behind the blog.

More thoughts about choosing a domain name

I do not really stand for the facts below, but I must confess they are rapidly gaining popularity.

• Always register a .com
• Don’t register a domain containing the digit “0” in it
• Consider naming your blog and registering a domain name starting with the digit “1.”
• Try to avoid using domains that contain ‘2’ for “to,” ‘4’ for ‘for,’ ‘u’ for ‘you.’

I think the above points do not need any clarification.
They are clear, right?

Table of contents for Domain Names and Web Hosting

1. Basic Things to Know About Domain Names
2. Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name
3. Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog
4. Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
5. I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

Hi Guys (or should I say noobs), welcome here again. This is the third post in this series (series 3 named Domain Names and Web Hosting). As you can see from the table of contents above, the first post was basic things to know about domain names and the second post was spice your blog with a domain name.

If you are convinced enough that you need a domain name for your blog, then let’s proceed on where to get one. Remember, when you buy a domain name, you are not actually buying as the word may imply. You are just renting it and will have to pay your annual dues until you decide not to use it any more. However, this does not strike out the fact that the domain name is temporally owned by you and the domain information will be yours and fully available to the entire web through services like whois.net, unless you pay for (or obtain free) domain privacy service.

Ok, enough of all that stuff

Where Can I Register A Domain Name?

I prefer you use the name register as opposed to buy, and I guess you have understood the explanation I gave above. You can talk of buying when you want to take the domain name over from some other individual who had already registered it, and in such a case, we are not going to be mentioning some $10.00 but many tens, if not hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Before we talk about registering a domain name, let’s have a little talk about domain registrars.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

We can’t talk about domain name registrars without mentioning ICANN (www.icann.org).
For every system to be successful, it needs a governing body that ensures uniformity in all activities. This is true especially in technology. Just imagine the USB Flash disk forexample. If there wasn’t a means of setting standards, then each PC manufacturing company will manufacture computers of various flash port sizes and also, USB flash disk manufactures will make USB Devices of various sizes and at the end of the day, you won’t find any pair that can go along.

ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. Remember we said a domain name forwards to an IP Address, so mentioning both in a single sentence is justified. If not of ICANN, then www.lainyonline.com will not be unique. It could have been possible for many registrars to register the same domain name for different individuals across the globe. The www could have been a mess altogether.

What / Who is a Domain Name Registrar?

A domain name registrar is any company that has been given the right to register domain names. This authority can come from ICANN or from the national ccTLD authority of a particular country.

What Exactly Do Domain Name Registrars Do

As earlier mentioned, a domain name registrar forwards the human readable domain name to its corresponding IP Address (which of course is the actual address of a website). Websites can still be accessed via their IP addresses, but we discussed that domains come into play to make those difficult numbers easy to handle by replacing them with words.

As we shall see earlier, domain name registrars do more than just forward domain names to IP Addresses.

Some Domain Name Registrars Worth Checking Out

I haven’t really used many domain name registration services, so I can’t present a concrete review here. However, I am very interested in a number of registrars that I have found on many reviews. If I were you I will not really trust the reviews because I don’t know how honest they are. If you want to check out a service, I recommend you ask a friend how has used it before, or someone who is not affiliated or directly linked with the service.

1. Netfirms : $4.95/yr (.com .net .org)
2. Hostway : $6.95/yr (.com .net .org)
3. FrugalName : $7.95/yr (.com .net .org)
4. Namecheap : $8.88/yr (.com .net .org)
5. AIT Domains : $7.99/yr (.com .net .org)
6. Go Daddy Software, Inc. $8.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
7. RegisterFly $8.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
8. PlanetDomain $12.99/yr : (.com .net .org)
9. Dotster $14.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
10. DirectNIC : $15/yr (.com .net .org)

The list above was borrowed from a post on E Consultant. The prices mentioned above are only for .com, .net and .org. Other TDLs feature different prices.

On this list, I have tried NameCheap, Netfirms and GoDaddy. I can proudly say NameCheap, though not the cheapest, is my best. For those of you who will like to use NameCheap, I will post a detailed review on a later date. Remember, I am just a humble and honest client. That’s all!

When choosing a Domain Name Registrar, taking price as the only yardstick is not a really good idea. One should always check out how good the customer service is, and also check out the extra benefits attached to the domain name they will purchase. Business practices and ethics also count a lot. I don’t think you will like a registrar that will intentionally trick you to allow your domain name to expire so that they can sell it at a higher price to you or another client (I know stories of such cases).

Now that you have an idea of where to register a domain name, our next post will be on how to choose the right domain name for your blog.

It is a song I have recorded before, but the soft copy (bundle file) got bad when my studio PC crashed and the recovered file couldn’t play smoothly. The one I had on CD was even worse. What will I do? Just one option. I now have to listen to the song, re-program the instrumental using Fruity Loops 8 Professional and get back into my recording studio and put the rap on it using Samplitude 7 Professional (Eh! this is not a sponsored post don’t think twice because of the above links). The Big Slim of Slim Records featured in that song. Where will I get him now to come and redo his verse? Maybe I will just take all two verses and the chorus alone.

I am not very good at imitating stuff. I could just do another instrumental for that song, but I am already in love with the first one I did, so I just want to replicate it. After a long struggle, I figured out the introductory instruments, the verses, two versions of the bass, and the verse-chorus / semi verse-semi verse DJ-like scratch. What is left now? Just bend the instruments and give the song a specific feel. I can’t continue. I reserve that for another time when I have a cooler head. I am not very good at it. Believe me when I say I never completed any of the music theory “classes” I took online. Maybe, when I finally go to a sound engineering school, I will be “perfect”.

Now is time for me to look into a friend’s computer. It scratched last night and he brought it to me for a solution. I haven’t done PC maintenance, but many people around me assume I am too smart to do stuff they want me to do.

9am, I am done. This is when I am coming in front of my PC to blog and as usual, the first thing I do is sign in my yahoo messenger. At this hour, I don’t expect Lainy to be online, but I expect an offline message (as if it is a job I have given her, hahahaha).

What! It is Lainy always giving me the updates and good news? Every time my Alexa and Google rank change, she is the first to let me know. First thing I did was to check hers too. I am always happy when her rankings are improving, or at least not falling. I never wanted to check Noela’s blog. She’s been writing good stuff and her Alexa ranking has rapidly been improving, but I never dreamt Google could get her ranked now. She has very little blogs linking to hers. Apart from this blog and the EC 4 Religion Blog, the only blog I have seen linking to hers is Dear me in this post. Maybe I should run link checker after I am done with this post. To my greatest surprised, however, Noela’s Blog has PR 1, and her Alexa has improved gradually from 900000 plus to 578,667

AZ Blogging now has
Google PageRank = 2
Alexa Rank = 127,557 (I owe Lainy very much for this Alexa Ranking. I mean it. She understands why)
I am very happy and I strive to go further during the next updates. My ranking has never dropped since I started this blog.

I will like to thank all you. Especially YOU read this post now. If not of faithful “fans” like you, AZ Blogging will be nothing…

Table of contents for Domain Names and Web Hosting

1. Basic Things to Know About Domain Names
2. Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name
3. Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog
4. Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
5. I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

Do I Really Need a Domain Name for my Blog?

If you are planning on starting a new blog, or you have a blog already and still sticking to a subdomain, I think you should pay a little attention to this.

Many people don’t see the need for a domain name. Without a full domain name, you will still post good content on your blog, drive some traffic and earn some money blogging. You will still build up links and get some pagerank. Yes! So what’s the deal? Not having a domain name will do prevent you from all that but wait a minute! Does it really hurt having one? Yeah! Maybe it does. Maybe you will have to lose up to $10 per year renting a domain name. Come on! I don’t se that as a big deal. If you are really serious with blogging and will like your blog to happily stand up and look into the eyes of other blogs, then you need o dress it up with one cool dot com, net, org, info…etc. Maybe the money is not even your problem. Maybe you will have to look for someone to set things up for your. I don’t think you should worry about that. Many bloggers out there, including me, are very ready to help.

Advantages of Having a Domain Name for Your Blog

Without a full domain name, your blog still remains and your and nothing will stop it from growing. However, let’s look at the other side of the fence.
With a full domain name, you can enjoy most of the following advantages

Gives Branding and Recognition

a subdomain identifies you with another entity and puts you “under” it. I don’t think you really want your blog in that state. Just as any business, organization or association out there, there is the need to be identified and verified, on the web, in the face of your readers. Registering a domain name brands your blog and you are recognized by it.

Adds Credibility

Having your own domain name, a professional image of you and your blog is being projected. Your domain name tells other bloggers that you are serious about blogging.

Gives you a “professional” Email Address

have I ever told you how happy I am having uncleche@azblogging.com? It gives me more credibility than I can ever imagine and places me in a professional field. Had a blind friend who was seriously seeking funding for a project put together by his NGO. He has been sending out emails for a very long time but with no reply.

Simplicity Guaranteed

Instead of az-blogging-tips.blogspt.com, I own azblogging.com. Come on!
With your own domain name, access on the World Wide Web becomes a simple. Just entering a domain name is enough. And if you choose wisely following some tips I will present here, then no one needs to even bother writing it down.

Portable Identity

if you are using a subdomain, your address will change each time you change hosts. Imaginge you are on blogspot.com and you move to Wordpress.com. your blog’s address will change from yourblog.blogspot.com to yourblog.wordpress.com. if you move again to freeostia.com, your address will change to yourblog.freehostia.com. If you have a domain name, these changes will not be necessary since you can use your DNS to associate your domain with any host. This will save you all the hassle of informing many people that your blog’s address has changed.
Your domain name ensures that your blog’s address is not only unique, but also permanent.

No labor in vain

It takes a lot of time, efforts and even money to promote a blog, get listed in search engines and directories, and build traffic. If your blog does not have a unique identity that you can carry along with you if you are moving, believe me, all the marketing you have been doing will be in vain and you will virtually be starting back from ground point.

I don’t have a domain name. So what?

Please don’t get this post wrong. If the post title says spice up your blog with a domain name, it doesn’t mean without a domain name, your blog is not spiced up . Without a domain name, your traffic will keep growing as it has been, you still get indexed and ranked higher and higher as you output good content etc.
I will also like to cancel the popular notion that someone without a domain is being carefree or unserious. Humans are very diverse with a wide range of choices.
If you as for my personal opinion, I will tell you that a domain name is far more worth than the extra $10 you spend on it every year.
Go for one!!!

Table of contents for Domain Names and Web Hosting

1. Basic Things to Know About Domain Names
2. Spice up Your Blog with a Domain Name
3. Where to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog
4. Choosing A Good Domain Name For Your Blog
5. I Just Bought A Domain Name, Now What?

When I received my welcome email from NameCheap Hosting after Lainy paid for it, I was reading it with babynoela. She saw the link to my control panel and was a little bit inquisitive about it.

You may access your control panel at http://65.254.49.210/cpanel or http://azblogging.com/cpanel if your domain has been transferred to our nameservers.

Looking at the above two links, Noela asked

…does it therefore mean azblogging.com is the same as 65.254.49.210?

That’s a very good question and it came right on time when I was planning to put up a post of this nature.

A majority of us are deeply possessed by the web so much that we care less about the little things on which it is built. We should be able to tell someone, even in the layman’s language what certain aspects of blogging, the blogosphere and the entire web are. The most basic of theses things should be domains and hosting.

Lets consider a friend’s url (http://www.scottzprincess.com/). I will be referring to it as an example throughout this post.

Do you understand what http://www.scottzprincess.com/ means? Do you know what a domain name is? What is a URI? Do you know what DNS is? We should be able to answer some very basic questions by the end of this post.

what is a domain name?

In lay terms, a domain name is an internet address by which a web site can be reached. It is a unique address that specifies the location of a website on the World Wide Web. A web site is normally built on a computer and then stored on a server. That server (which of course is also a computer) has an IP Address just like phones have phone numbers. Accessing the stored website through its unique IP address is a little bit difficult since the IP address is a string of numbers and dots which most people find difficult to remember.

This is where domain names come into play. Domain names “replace” the long and difficult to remember strings that can be used to access a website. I put replace in quotes because what a domain name does is that it basically forwards you to the IP address.

What is a URL

A url is the entire web address that contains the domain name.

Scottzprincess.com is a domain name but http://www.scottzprincess.com/ is a URL.
The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the full address of a website.

Now, let’s look at the various building blocks that make up a URL.

Top Level Domain (TDL)

I guess you must have seen TDL many times but never cared about it.
The TDL is the suffix that comes immediately after the dot in the domain name. Popular TDLs include com, net, org, edu.
TDLs are further broken down into generic TDLs (gTDLs), country code TDLs (ccTDLs) and infrastructure TDLs.

Most of the TDLs you are very versed with are generic TDLs. These include com, net, org, edu, gov, mil, int, aero, biz, coop, info, museum, name, pro, etc…

Country code TDLs end with the two letter abbreviation assigned to countries, e.g. uk for the united kingdom, ca for Canada, us for united states…etc

Infrastructure domain names are used for Internet-infrastructure purposes and limited to the government agency which formulated the internet. This agency is called Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

SECOND Level Domain (SDL)

The SDL is the readable part of the domain name. In our example above, this readable part should be scottzprincess.

The subdomain

This is the part that comes before the SDL. In our example above, that should be www

Take special not that a subdomain is very different from a directory.
Consider the following urls
http://www.healthbuff.scottzprincess.com/
http://www.scottzprincess.com/healthbuff

healthbuff in the first url is a subdomain while in the second, it is a directory.

what happens when I type a domain name in a browser

When you enter scottzprincess.com into the address bar of your browser, the computer does a search of the domain name system (DNS). The DNS is a system that converts a domain name into the corresponding IP address. This system is maintained by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The DNS will translate scottzprincess.com into the IP number and your computer will then connect with the blog Our Journey to Forever!

Easy to understand, right?