At Mad Cow, we absolutely love teaching about web development. (So much so that we upload free training videos regularly to our YouTube channel!)
And we get asked a lot about these four basic pieces of the World Wide Web:
- Domain registration
- Name Servers / DNS
- Website hosting
- Email hosting
This blog post is a launching point for any discussion you’d like to have about getting your website or email up and running.
First, an important disclaimer:
- This post is in no way meant to be an exhaustive review of DNS, but more of a basic guideline for messing with your domain. In general, this is a scary place to mess around if you’re not super comfortable.
- Our main piece of advice is to enlist the help of your local, friendly web nerd and let them make any changes. (And if they’re an educational bunch, they may even show you what they’re doing to help you out next time.)
Having said that, let’s get to it!
Domain Registration
We often get asked, “What is domain registration … and does it matter?” This is a great question because it starts the website conversation at the very beginning!
Domain registration is the base level of domain stuff. This only means that you own the domain. For example, if I register “JasonRobie.com” (which I have!), nobody else can register that domain.
What do you get when you register a domain?
Beyond having a domain registered somewhere, it literally means nothing else. There’s nothing else tied to this domain, such as a website, an email address, etc. All that we’re talking about here is the ownership of this specific string of text characters.
Where do you register a domain?
There are many places where you can register a domain, including SiteGround and Cloudflare.
Typically, folks register at GoDaddy. (They’ve done the most marketing, right?) It 100% does not matter where they want to host their website or how they want to manage their email service. Domain Registration is only the domain ownership. No more.
Does my choice of domain registrar impact anything else?
No. Where you register a domain has nothing to do with where your website lives (hosting) or how you want to manage your email service.
Domain registration is only the domain ownership—nothing more.
Name Servers / DNS
Name servers/DNS are all the records that direct all the internet traffic to the correct locations for any and all services attached to the domain.
Typically, these are “IP Addresses,” which are the electronic mailing addresses for the servers where those things are located.
- Website? – Sure thing. Go to this IP address.
- Email address? – Got it. Go to this entirely different IP address.
- FTP/SFTP? – No prob. Go to this other different IP address.
It’s important to note that you can have your domain registered at one location, but host the Name Servers / DNS at a different location.
For example, you can use GoDaddy only for your domain registration (as we talked about above), and then have all your DNS controlled by SiteGround. Those two things do not have to be at the same place—and best practices recommend that they are not.
Website Hosting
Web hosting is where the files and database for the website are stored. At Mad Cow, we use WP Engine as one option and SiteGround as a second option. (There are hundreds of web hosting services out there, and most are garbage. 🫠)
It’s also important to understand what specific hosting companies offer. For example:
- WP Engine only offers hosting—no domain registration, no DNS, no email, etc.
- SiteGround offers all of these services.
So with SiteGround, you can:
-
- Register your domain name.
- Manage your DNS.
- Host your website.
- Host your email. (More on that below.)
All of these services at the same service provider. That’s pretty neato.
Email Hosting
Email hosting is the service that handles the sending and receiving of the email associated with your domain name.
Email hosting vs. Email client
Oftentimes, people will use an “Email Client” that connects to the email service and allows the user to send/receive email. Outlook and Thunderbird are two of the more common email clients. (90% of the time when I ask a client what they are using for email, they tell me “Outlook.”)
- Outlook, for example. is the piece of software they’re using to connect to their email service. Outlook is not their email service provider.
- That service could be their web hosting server, Gmail, Office 365, or Hover.
Recommended hosting services
We always recommend Gmail, Office 365, or Hover for email services. We 100% strongly discourage clients from using their hosting provider for their email.
As I indicated in guest post I wrote for CodeGeek about spam, problems with emails getting trapped in spam filters are exacerbated greatly when you use your web hosting provider as your email service. It’s never a good idea.
Moving to a new email host is a big deal
Email is always the most problematic of services to move to a new host. Clients often have hundreds or thousands of emails left on the server.
We should always have a conversation about moving to a new email host before touching anything related to the domain or the DNS. (If this is the case, contact us asap!)
Can Mad Cow help with these things?
We sure can! If you need a domain registered, a website hosted, or an email “serviced,”, we’d be happy to take care of that for you. 🐮
Featured image credit: Miguel Ángel Padriñán Alba on Unsplash
—
Want more beginner web dev knowledge?
Check out our WordPress for Beginners training »
