Last year I had to help someone migrate a Joomla eLearning site to Wordpress.

Quickly learned “simple website” meant deployed to a VPS on a provider I’d never heard of layered with an obscure CRM and lead generation platform.

The networking was an even bigger headache because turns out you can tightly couple your registrar to the dns to the hosting platform.

I recently heard the clip of the programmers are gatekeepers lady via Twitter.

Can confirm, people do actually struggle to register and set up a website.

Luckily buying all the domains wasn’t an issue for them, they already bought them all a long time back.

The difficulty was everything after the dot com.

Which, valid. It took me a while to learn it too.

Here’s the gist so I can link this now instead of having to retype it.

Web Browser

This is typically how humans interface with the Network.

Over simplifying, but it provides a standard way for things on the internet to be displayed and interacted with.

Most people access the Browser with a Computer.

Computer

In the most simple terms, computers are very fancy calculators.

Originally they were humans; who pretty early on had specialized tools.

Classically we used them to calculate navigation and astrological tables.

In the 1800s we were able to use them to tabulate the census with punch cards.

And by the 1900s we were using them to calculate the trajectory of artillery, encrypt communications, and model the sciences like meteorology and nuclear physics.

At one point we used them to put the Apollo missions on the moon. Now we use them to place pixels on a screen.

They come in a wide variety of forms. Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, routers, switches, streaming boxes/sticks, TVs, speakers, security systems, lightbulbs, refrigerators, laundry machines, cars, planes, etc.

Starting simple, things that do math.

The Network

This is how computers talk to each other.

Cables, antennas, and other specialized computers.

These can be public (the Internet) and private (governments, schools, businesses, homes, etc.)

Now we have Computers talking to each other.

The hosting provider/platform.

This is the company that’s running and managing the datacenter and making all the compute available to customers.

Don’t think futurist digital factory, think warehouse full of computers and cables. All of which gets very hot.

Computers on the Network can now interact with a massive computer made of smaller Computers.

The host.

This is the server (fancy word for virtual computer) where your website lives.

Computers talk to a Hosting Provider over the Network to interact with another Computer.

Domain

This is the main link that people go to to access your site. w w w dot checkoutmysite dot com. Not a 100% one-to-one analogy, but kinda like a phone number to reach it.

This is what people type into their Web Browser.

IP Address

The Domain is for the human to read. But computers have trouble with text. Numbers are easier. Explaining why is out of scope.

The offline ip address of the device you’re using is 127.0.0.1, notice how it’s a handful of numbers separated by dots.

IP stands for Internet Protocol.

The Internet is a bunch of wires and signals (using the air as a wire) that connect computers.

Things talk over the internet by sending packets (messages) to each other.

But how do they talk?

That’s called a Protocol. It’s a standardized way for systems to interface (talk) with one another.

So Internet Protocol Address is the location on the network that computers go to access your website.

Computers talk to a Hosting Provider over the Network to interact with a Host by connecting to its digital address.

Primary domain

You can have multiple Domains pointing to the same website. But you need to have one that’s the main. For example, in the case of the short book I wrote over the holidays, the primary domain is https://mildprogramming.com/.

Computers talk to a Hosting Provider over the Network to interact with a Host by connecting to its IP Address. We’re better at remembering words, so we type a Domain into the Web Browser. Behind the scenes, it gets routed to an IP Address

Secondary domain

Like I said, you can have multiple domains that all point to the same website. Using the same example, my secondary is https://prohjectmanagement.com/. Notice how it automatically changes the domain when the homepage loads.

Similar to the previous, only it’s the Secondary Domain that goes into the Web Browser instead of the Primary Domain.

DNS

Domain name service. This is what tells the network what IP Address your Domain points to.

Computers talk to a Hosting Provider over the Network to interact with a Host by connecting to its IP Address. We type a Domain into the Web Browser. A specialized service maps IP Addresses to Domains

Registrar

The registrar is where your domain is registered, it’s what tells the internet who has rights to which domains.

These are oftentimes the ones you see in SuperbOwl commercials.

The registrar is also usually where you buy your domain. Not always though.

Note that these are leased. Not owned.

Computers talk to a Hosting Provider over the Network to interact with a Host by connecting to its IP Address. We type a Domain into the Web Browser. DNS maps IP Addresses to Domains. The Registrar maps the Human to the Domain.