A Domain Name or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the text that appears at the top of the browser when you visit a website.  It is the name of the site and is very much like signs which appear above shops.   You can divide a domain name into three parts: The Domain Name; the Domain Names Extension (or Top Level Domains-TLDs); and the Domain Prefix (or MX Record).

The best way to think about a website is to think about a 24/7 corner shop.

If you wanted to open such a shop you must first find premises that people can visit whatever time of the day they like.  Your own home is typically a private place and although some people may choose to open a shop in their home most of us do not.   So instead business owners look to rent property for example in a shopping centre.  

Now for a second lets imagine we did want to open our home as a shop. Many people don't realize that all computers have the capacity to operate as a web-server and serve websites.  With the appropriate software install (Apache or microsoft's IIS are the most popular) any PC can do the job.   However, the downside to running your own webserver is that you are responsible for security, maintenance and keeping it turned on all the time. 

Buying or renting web hosting from someone like web-ethical is akin to renting a unit in a shopping centre.   By renting space in a shopping centre you pass responsibility for the security and maintenance to the owners of the shopping centre and they charge you a premium for doings so - although I'd like to think that we offer quite cost effective solutions.   Now, because you are sharing resources and disk space it is called shared hosting (also known as virtual hosting).

Some companies have shops or websites that demand lots of space or services and in this case this is called deducted hosting and like a shop this means you have sole use of the computer.

So we now have some premises for our shop or website we need to give it a name and this is where the domain name comes in. Also known as URL the domain name is the name of the shop (See the blog on selecting domain names).