Difference between domain name and URL with example

This post was written and distributed with the intention of elucidating the URL as well as the domain names. The two phrases that should be kept in mind when working with the internet.

The structure of the Internet known as the World Wide Web (WWW) is built on a protocol known as HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), as well as a language known as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).

URL

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is an Internet address format that is utilized by HTTP. The URL is formatted as follows:

type://address/path

In this case, the value of type indicates the kind of server on which the file is stored, the value of address indicates the address of the server, and the value of path indicates the location of the file on the server. Take for instance the following portion of the URL:

https://codescracker.com/networking/url-domain-names.htm

Here, "https" specifies the type of server, "codescracker.com" is the address, and "networking/url-domain-names.htm" is the path. The file that will be served on the browser is "url-domain-names.htm."

Each resource on the internet has a unique address, which is specified by a uniform resource locator (URL). For example:

url example snapshot

The following image depicts the various components of a URL.

url with all components example

Domain Name

An Internet address that is character-based is called a domain name. For example: "codescracker.com", "google.com", and "youtube.com" etc. Here's a real-world example in which I indicated the domain name from the URL.

domain name in url example

Internet Servers and Their Description

Here is a table that lists Internet servers and describes what they offer:

Server Protocol Information Provides
ftp File Transfer Protocol Text and binary files that are organized in a hierarchical structure, much like a family tree
gopher Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Text and binary files that are organized in a menu structure
http Hypertext Transfer Protocol Hypertext/hypermedia files, that is, multimedia documents that contain links to images, sounds, or other multimedia documents on the World Wide Web
mail Post Office Protocol (POP) Version 3 and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Messages sent via electronic mail
news Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) Newsgroups that are organized in a hierarchical structure.

List of Common Domains

Here is a table listing the most common domains with their affiliations and remarks:

Domain ID Affiliation Remarks
com Commercial for commercial firms
edu Education for educational firms
gov Government for government organizations
mil Military for Military
net Network Resources for ISPs/networks
org Usually, non-profit organizations for NGOs and other non-profit
co Company for listed companies
biz Business for business
tv Television for television companies and channels

Popular country abbreviations used in domains

Sometimes a two-letter abbreviation indicating a country name may be used. For example,

https://www.google.co.uk

Here, the last uk (.uk) suggests that it is based in UK.

The table that follows provides a listing of some of the most well-known country abbreviations that are used in domain names.

Abbreviation Country Name
au Australia
ca Canada
dk Denmark
fr France
in India
jp Japan
nz New Zealand
uk United Kingdom

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