From HostThyself

What is a domain name?

A domain name is part of what you see as the web address or url (Uniform Resource Locator). You can see it in the "address" bar on a browser.

An example of domain name is "hostthyself.com". It's a unique so there will not be another domain name with the same name. Technically a domain name corresponds to a numeric IP address like 192.168.123.123. Just like your home address, IP address is how computers, servers are located on the Internet. Since people remember name better than a strings of number, domain name is used as an alias to IP address.

When you see a domain name like "hostthyself.com", it consist of 2 parts - a name and an extension. Common extension like .com, .org, .net or others which ends after the final dot or period (.) of a url, it is known as top-level domain. New top-level domains such as .aero, .info, .museum, and .name are also recently launched.

Other than top-level domain, there are also country level domain. Examples of country level domain name are "example.cn", "example.sg", "example.cc", "example.jp". These domains end with a country code and hence is also known as country code top-level domain (ccTLD).