Domains are your location on the internet. When you own a domain, you can tell people to go to mysite.com and they will see whatever content you’ve uploaded for that domain. Each domain name is matched to an IP address and follows the Domain Name System (DNS).

Without a domain name, every website could only be found by the number of the IP address. Imagine that instead of typing liquidweb.com into your browser, you had to remember 151.139.128.10, Liquid Web’s IP address. Now imagine remembering random numbers for every website you ever want to visit!

Domain names make it much easier to use the internet. It’s the difference between using GPS coordinates to get somewhere and using a street address to find a location.

Let’s use support.liquidweb.com to show how domain names work. Even though it can be a little confusing, domain names are actually read from right to left. No one reads them like this when telling you how to find their website, but reading from right to left creates a funnel: the address goes from the very general (top-level domain) to the very specific.

Top-Level Domains

Top-level domains (TLDs) like com, net, and org hold the right-most position in a domain name. Countries can also have their own TLD. Every domain name must end with a TLD. In support.liquidweb.com, the TLD is com.

Second-Level Domains (and Beyond)

Whatever is directly to the left of the TLD (in between the next set of “dots” or periods) is called the second-level domain. In the example support.liquidweb.com, liquidweb is the second-level domain. Anything to the left of the second-level domain dot is the third-level domain. In this case, support is the third-level domain. This can go on and on as long as there are more names separated by periods to the left. The more levels you use, the more specific your address is.

When you purchase a domain name, you buy the right to use a TLD, a second-level domain, and as many other third-level or more names. So, you’d buy the right to use mysite.com (or whatever you’d like your domain to be). If you want to add further domains like blog.mysite.com, you don’t have to pay for another domain name, you already own the right to add as many extra names to the left of the second-level domain as you would like. This is considered a subdomain and you can set it up through your domain management system, like cPanel. Of course, the more sub-domains you add, the longer your web address will be (making it harder for customers to find your content).