Domain Name Extensions – An Explanation That Helps
The Universal Resource Locator or URL of your website basically consists of three parts, first, the prefix of the Internet, the World Wide Web, which is abbreviated by “www”; second, the main domain name, the term that you give your website; and third, the domain name extension, also known as the top level domain, the suffix that closes the address of your website.
For instance, in www[dot]ThisisAnExampleDomain[dot]com, “ThisisAnExampleDomain” is the main domain name, while .com is the domain name extension. We can explain domain name extensions by relating it to an organizational chart. Domain name extensions are big organizations on the Internet. Within each domain name extension there is a collection of several domain names, and within each domain names, there is also a collection of sub domain names. This kind of subdivisions go further and further as the URL earns more and more dot [.] separators.
Today, the domain name extension dotcom [.com] remains to have the most number of webpages on the Internet. Some of the pioneer domain name extensions created are .edu, to classify websites related to educational institutions; .gov, which is restricted to the web pages of the United States government; .int, to categorize websites used internationally; .mil, to classify webpages belonging to the United States military, and .org, to signify websites of organizations.
Aside from these top level domains, there are other less popular extensions like .name, .tel, .jobs, .info, .biz, among many others. Soon enough, different country domain extensions are devised in order to categorize websites according to nation of origin. For the United States, the extension is .us, for Canada, .ca, for mainland China, .cn, for France, .fr, and for Japan, .jp.
