What’s the Difference Between Domain, Hosting and Website

Travis Schumacher 0:00 Hello again and welcome back to marketing with purpose. Today we're going to talk about the difference between domain, hosting, and website. Those are three words that we use all the time over, at mayecreate like on repeat, you could just run a repeating real domain hosting website domain hosting website domain hosting website, like pretty much like on repeat every day, right? But they're incredibly intangible like that you cannot touch them. It's really interesting. But they're so important for your business. So people ask us all the time, it's like, they're, they're a question factory about these things. They don't even know what a domain name is. Sometimes they don't know how you get one or how you connect it to everything. They don't know what hosting is, why you need it, or like how to know even what type of hosting you need, like people just don't know. And so if you're up to your neck and questions like if you're one of those people, then this is the episode for you. Because I'm teaming up with my favorite tech friends, Travis and Stacy to bring you answers. Travis say hi. Hello. Hello. Monica Pitts 1:02 So Travis Schumacher is my not so little brother who actually runs a data center that's a home for servers okay. And he's with Tranquility Internet services and does a lot of internet service stuff. And and we need internet for the data center for the for the websites to be seen like the internet is what makes the website seem can we all be clear on this? There's so many pieces of it. I think you guys are gonna get that by the time we're done with this. And then I have Stacy say hi, Stacy. Hey, friends. So Stacy is my chief we're of many hats at MayeCreate and guides people to domain bliss on the daily literally she's always helping people do this stuff. So together, we're gonna unravel the role of domain name and domain registrar's and then move on to decode hosting for you. Travis will explain the different types of hosting shared VPs and dedicated so you know exactly which is right for you. And Stacy is going to explain everything about domains probably more than you ever wanted to know. And then I'll explain how your website touches it all and how it all comes together. All right. So with that, let's dive into some tech and let's get to business. You're on mission and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. Okay, so I know that you all know some of my favorite techniques to have on this podcast are Travis and Stacy, you've been hanging out with them a lot lately. But I have not invited them to say very much about themselves. They've shared a lot of information with you, especially in the Small Business tech stack series. And if you haven't checked that out, you totally should. You're going to learn about all the tools that we use to run our businesses and our clients businesses. But they got here, like, kind of in roundabout ways, right? You didn't just start off in tech, especially you Stacy. So Stacy, how on earth did you become a domain name master and purveyor of websites? Stacy Brockmeier 3:33 It was all out of my hands. No. I have a degree in agricultural education. I taught high school ag for a moment when I got out of school. And then I got married and moved and did not have an ag education position anymore. But I had worked for Monica and Travis's dad for years in college. And I think Leon told Monica Hey, I know this girl that's looking for a job. It was 9am and I was still in bed because I was like 23 years old. You know, I was young and why I didn't have a job. So I was sleeping. And Monica called me. And which I just think is so funny because I didn't apply for a job. But she called me to do a phone interview while I was asleep. And I mean 13 years later here we are. With a lot of in between Monica took me under her wing. I had no idea how websites were built or anything to do with them at all other than how to use them and we've learned a lot along the way and here we are. Monica Pitts 4:44 Okay, so Travis, how do you out how are you running an Internet service provider and a data center? How did you get there? Travis Schumacher 4:53 Well, I had a journey, kind of similar to Stacy's, I got a degree in Ag business, okay, and so business was kind of my thing. And obviously my father and Leon, he's the other owner of tranquillity and he said, Hey, I need some eyes and ears to see how things are going. And so I got into the, you know, the internet business by collecting money past due to past due payments, and hung around with a lot of the guys that were managed and stuff, you know, picked up a lot of stuff pretty quickly, because you're around it all the time. got pretty good at credit, quite a bit of it. And before you know it, I was logging into routers and helping people taking payments, still taking payments from people and getting more responsibilities on on my plate. Stacy Brockmeier 5:51 And teaching them what they need Travis's a lot of like, telling other people what he needs a lot of consulting, consulting, Monica Pitts 6:01 he just consulted with me with my new office, because I was like, Well, they didn't do any networking at all, in my office. And so I like I got him on FaceTime, and I'm like, showing him everything that I've gotten. I'm like, What on earth are we gonna do with this? And he's like, you're gonna have to buy some cables on a and I'm like, Alright, we're gonna Travis the heck out of this. Stacy Brockmeier 6:30 It's just so funny that they built you an office, like it was literally studs a month or two ago. And they it's 2023, the end of 2023. We're nearly 2024. And they didn't run any internet. No, no ways for the Internet to come to your computer. Other than wirelessly Monica Pitts 6:56 Being in a small town has disadvantages for sure. Travis Schumacher 6:59 no outlets in the wall, they're in conduits on the outside of the wall. That was conduit in the walls. Monica Pitts 7:07 I thought they weren't going to give me power at all at one point because there was no outlets. Like because this isn't our first rodeo. Like we've remodeled some stuff together, Stacy and I and Mike and I, so I'm used to like this very specific process. And then I was like, What am I even talked to him about, like data and where it should go and how it was gonna work and where each of the spots needed to be and then they just not there. So I'm gonna put it in myself. I'm gonna, Travis that my office is gonna be. Okay. All right. So let's talk about domains, hosting, and website and how they all come together and make this thing that everybody sees and uses and thinks of when they think of doing business online. So let's start off with domain names. Stacy, you are our domain name expert. I occasionally weigh in with what I think a domain name should be. But that's kind of where I check out. And when you're not here, by the way, our staff slaps me all day. And they're like, hey, what does this mean with this domain? And I'm like, I think Stacy did a video about it. Let me watch it. I don't know. So what what is the definition of a domain name? Like what even is this thing? Stacy Brockmeier 8:27 So a domain name is something that you purchase, that usually is related to your business that allows people to get either to your website or to your email encompasses all these little tech things that are associated with your business. So that is your mayecreate.com, for example, is a domain name, a URL. Monica Pitts 8:55 Oh, yeah. And it's called the URL. That's, that's right. What does that even mean? U R. L. Stacy Brockmeier 9:04 I don't know. It's also like SSL. I know. I know a lot about them. But what does it even stand for? Let's google it. Monica Pitts 9:10 No. Okay. Well, you're Googling it. Uniform Stacy Brockmeier 9:14 Uniform Resource Locator. Monica Pitts 9:17 So that makes sense, it's an address. Stacy Brockmeier 9:19 But does it does it make sense? It feels a little bit like, what's the uniform company that like, you see, where they go around and they drop off people's uniforms, and then they come pick them up and they clean them? Monica Pitts 9:32 It makes perfect sense to me, Stacy, you know, meaning there's one, like localized thing. So that would be like mayecreate.com. Right? So that's the uniform and it touches all these other resources. It touches like your email, it touches any subdomains, your main website, like all these different things, right? And it's the location. Okay, so, resource locator that ah, maybe I'll remember that for Whatever, maybe I'll never remember it again. It's okay. So, um, how do you get one? Where do you go? What are these people called? Stacy Brockmeier 10:08 They are called domain registrar's. So there's many of them. We use GoDaddy for our domain registrar. So we purchase our domain through GoDaddy, there's also named.com Network Solutions to cows, I mean, the the, there's an endless number of them. We just always use GoDaddy, they do a great job with domain registration. Monica Pitts 10:33 They really do. And it's pretty streamlined the way that they work it. Funny story about that I like started our original domain account, like underneath might just my normal personal account. And I don't even know how many domains we had in there, like, hundreds. And eventually GoDaddy reached out to us and they were like, you have like, hundreds of domains. Did you know and were like, Yeah, I mean, we pay all the bills, and they were like, you should definitely get a business account. And then it made it way easier to manage all those domains. But Stacy Brockmeier 11:06 And way cheaper, we got them in like bulk. We were like a wholesaler. At that point. It Monica Pitts 11:10 It kind of makes me wonder why they even did that like they could have charged me way more money. Maybe that makes me like them even more in this account for domains. Let's be clear for domains for domains. Okay, so parts of the domain name, you alluded to them earlier, but break them down for us. So we know what to break and what not to break. I mean, what not to break. Stacy Brockmeier 11:31 Okay, so I want you to think about your domain name like a roundabout. So if you're near anywhere near us, roundabouts are super popular, they're the thing that's a circle in the street, and you drive around, and you can get off at like many different locations. Right, I wish you I wish you could see my hands because I'm like describing the roundabout. And I'm like flailing hands everywhere. So your domain name is the middle of the roundabout. And then there's the thing called DNS. So that is the map of your domain name. And it tells you which exit to get off on for what so the exits of your domain name are your website, and your email. And you might have a server that's tied to it. And you can have other services that use your domain name. But your DNS is the map that tells you which exit to get off. So there's an exit for your website, there's a text for your email, Monica Pitts 12:26 W W W, Which, which, so which one's your which one's your website? One, what are the letters Stacy Brockmeier 12:33 your A record is your website, you should have an A record and it has points to an IP address. And that little IP address is what tells the Internet where to find your website, Monica Pitts 12:45 then what's the www record? Stacy Brockmeier 12:48 Well, there isn't a www record anymore. It's a CNAME, or a record with a CNAME. And then that www is kind of dead. I don't know, like you should still use it for good. We're talking about death Monica Pitts 13:02 I'm so old, so old. Stacy Brockmeier 13:05 But if your domain name starts with www, it shouldn't. But you should be able to type in www dot your domain name and still get to your website, it just shouldn't be the main thing anymore. Monica Pitts 13:20 And you should test that, by the way, Stacy Brockmeier 13:22 go test it because if it doesn't work both ways, you need to talk to your web developer about it. So that way they can fix it for you super easy fix, like literally two minutes, it does not take long to fix. So then you have another set of letters. So your a record is your website, your MX record is your email. So that is another exit off your roundabout. So when somebody sends you an email, the internet has to know where to send that thing. And so it is also connected to a set of letters and numbers that tells your email where to be routed to and then it comes to your inbox. Monica Pitts 14:00 Now if you are needing a domain name, and you're not sure which one is right for you, then we have a podcast about that. Is that surprising? No, it's not even surprising anymore. Stacy and I did an episode how to pick a domain name that doesn't suck. So go over to mayecreate.com you can click on podcast, or you can just use our search bar how to pick a domain name that doesn't suck. And we will talk you through exactly how to do that. And some of the horror stories about domain names. Stacy Brockmeier 14:33 I've had another horror story since then, which is really funny. Monica Pitts 14:40 Sometimes things spell out words that we didn't intend. Stacy Brockmeier 14:44 That was a horror story that I had recently. It was an education platform for public schools and then we really had to rename or redo the domain name because it had sex in the middle of it. Monica Pitts 14:58 Oh heavens. Stacy Brockmeier 15:00 So you can't really put things out to public schools about sex. I don't know if anybody knew it's a little bit frowned upon. Monica Pitts 15:08 All right, so let's move on to hosting. Stacy Brockmeier 15:13 On that awkward note, let's go Monica Pitts 15:16 Travis, What on earth is web hosting? Travis Schumacher 15:20 I like to think of web hosting. Like a house. It's basically where, where your website or your roundabout is that your house, so is where where your website is, can be big hands on how big your website is, right? It can be fancy, it can be basic, it can have a pool in the backyard, it could have a basketball court, you know, it could have a single car garage, you can rent it, or own it. All sorts of stuff. Stacy Brockmeier 15:49 The house, Monica Pitts 15:50 I think renting is better. Travis Schumacher 15:52 So yeah, so web hosting, there's a couple different types, you know, going on with that, you know, there's a shared apartment complex, right? So there's other websites that are that are on this shared environment, just like apartment complex. Monica Pitts 16:05 Wait, shared is almost like Okay, so in a shared hosting situation, everyone has the same hot water heater. Okay, let's get this straight. They all have the same hot water heater, there's only a certain amount of hot water to go around the entire place. And when the hot water is gone, it's gone. There's only a certain amount of internet, right? Yeah, so this is like me with my kids in the house. I have a 13 year old girl who takes the longest showers ever. And so we have to negotiate the shower times. And we also have to negotiate who can watch TV while mommy's working. Because we have online TV, right? Stacy Brockmeier 16:44 Shared house, shared Internet and shared water, Monica Pitts 16:48 you're renting a room, you're renting a room inside of a house, I feel like Travis Schumacher 16:53 yes, that's what shared is. Stacy Brockmeier 16:56 It's like VRBO, if you don't rent, Travis Schumacher 16:58 it has its purpose. Its economical. If you like cold showers, it's okay. Right, it's still a place to house your website, right? It's not that it's, you know, bad, maybe it's not ideal. But given the circumstances, hey, you've got a place for it to live. Okay. Monica Pitts 17:18 And we've talked about how a shared hosting situation could be good, or acceptable, rather, we don't actually use them for our clients, but it is acceptable for a small website that doesn't need a lot of resources to function. Right? So it's just a small website, a few pages, not a lot of functions, Travis Schumacher 17:36 product page, contact us, you know, like a brochure, right? So. So that's, you know, there's, that's just shared. Okay. So then you got your virtual private server, you know, hosting. And I kind of think of that like, like a condo, not an apartment complex, but there's two hot water heaters, you're sharing the driveway, you know, a little bit so there's kind of pooled resources, right, everybody's got their own garage, but the driveway is in the middle. So you got your two car garage. And you know, they're, they're kind of they're separated from from one another. But there's a finite amount of resources for those, those are great for, you know, your little bit bigger websites, maybe there's some content driven them, you guys can can help me on this. But I think maybe like a simple blog, maybe not a crazy dynamic web page. But something where people are gonna, you know, there might be a fair amount of traffic, you know, coming to it. Monica Pitts 18:29 Yeah, if you have an E commerce site, if you have a learning management system, or a members only section, something that has to be up so your clients can get to it and do business, or if you run a blog, like the MayeCreate blog that gets 1000s of hits, you know, a day, then you're going to need something that's a VPS setup, because it needs to be up it needs to be working, and you need to have a certain amount of resources for it to work and not be sluggish and gross. Basically. Travis Schumacher 19:01 You want your hot water, you don't want to take I want it. You want some hot water, right? Yeah. Okay, and so then you got showers. So then you got your dedicated your dedicated hosting, which is like your own house, that's yours. You build your house and how she needed a big pool. Or if you need, like I said, a big basketball court. It's dedicated. So you have to decide how many resources you need, how big it needs to be. It's designed just for you. Stacy Brockmeier 19:31 And we're talking like, target level, like if your target you need a dedicated website, right? If you're just a normal business or like who would need a dedicated something. Travis Schumacher 19:44 Come on, get specific application. That's what I'm thinking. Maybe something that needs a lot more resources, then maybe just your virtual private, you know, server something that says maybe custom coding or custom software bits something more specific is usually where clients fall under the dedicated hosting for my experience. Stacy Brockmeier 20:08 Very cool. I most of our clients are on VPS. So they're kind of in that middle of the road. But we do have a client or two, that's a dedicated space. Monica Pitts 20:20 Yeah. Because there were a couple that we realized the hard way that they were going to have such a huge hit of traffic, at a certain time of the year that we had to move them to a dedicated space during that time of year. And fortunately, with a lot of hosting companies these days, it's like click, click, click, and you're there, right? But But during that time of year, they have to have those resources, like they have to have a bigger spot. So like a music festival, or an online store at Christmas. More power there, Stacy Brockmeier 20:56 your hosting company or hosting space can really like make or break you if you have a lot of traffic at certain times. Monica Pitts 21:03 Yeah, I remember when we ran como cub crawl, do you remember that, too. We had all of these. So it was the brainchild of this person that we shared office space with. They were another company. And so we hid an icon on a group of clients websites. And then we ran a contest for a free gift card to a grocery store. I think it was for the person who found it. And and we crashed our server. Yeah, because we had so much traffic going to all of our websites at the same time. And we were like, What do you mean, it's not working? Stacy Brockmeier 21:43 Marketing Success hosting fail. That's where that whole story like marketing success meets hosting fail. That's what happened was that Monica Pitts 21:52 could have utilized a dedicated observer for that particular task. We just didn't even know Stacy Brockmeier 22:00 didn't know no. Monica Pitts 22:03 Travis, what happens when you have a website that is not on the right hosting platform, like, I don't mean platform like Linux, I mean, like, if you don't have the right type of hosting space, what happens to your website, Travis Schumacher 22:18 you don't know the right space mean, your site could load slow, you know, maybe certain pages may not open, you know, or basically, your your house on the web isn't going to be inviting, you know, if you don't have the right one, that that's probably the easiest way to put it with if we're gonna continue on the analogy, you know. So, you know, from that standpoint, when you're looking for a reliable hosting, you know, you got your foundation and your flooring, you got your roof, your walls, want to make sure you have a good home for your website. Monica Pitts 22:54 So the last piece that we need to break down for you guys is kind of a little bit on how your website works. Because that's what Travis is describing here. It's like things are really, really slow. And it's because your website is composed of like a bunch of things put together. It's kind of like baking a cake. If you're gonna bake it from scratch, you've got all this stuff, you got to put into the mixer to mix it together and make it right. And the oven is the conduit that makes the cake come together well, with a website, all of your ingredients are things like your pictures and your text, the HTML that holds them all. And then the CSS that tells them how to look, the JavaScript that might allow you to interact with things and then the PHP or whatever script that's talking back and forth to your database to retrieve information for you. And then all that stuff lives on the server. And when someone types in your domain name, it pings the server. And between the server and the browser, they bake a cake. Yes, that's what happens, the cake gets baked. And so when you have the right hosting plan for your website, that cake gets baked fast, and it bakes perfectly every time. And when you have the wrong hosting space for your website, your cake is going to be gross. You might have parts of your cake that are cooked and part of it that isn't or it might just stop halfway and and people abandon it. Right. So it's all those things together. And and how big they are too, right? Because there's a size to all of these elements. There's a reason why cupcakes bake faster than than cakes, right? Because they're small. So if you have a super small website, it's going to load up faster and display faster. If you have a super big one, like a big cake, it's going to it's going to cook at a different rate at a different temperature. Right. And so as while I'm doing these baking analogies, I'm hoping that it's helping all the gears Click together as to how it all works. And why it's important to have a website that's built correctly. But also that's on the right type of hosting space and have a domain name that's properly pointed to everything so that way people can actually get to it. Tada, all of the pieces, all the pieces. Alright, so now you guys know, you know all this stuff. Travis, Stacy, anything else you want to tell people about domain names and hosting. In this total episode of domain names and hosting, make Travis Schumacher 25:37 sure you got a decent home for your for the website that you want, you know that that's the big thing, you got an idea what you want your, your your website to look like or be or do for your business, or you hope it's going to do for your business. So make sure you have the right you know, the right the right home for it to be in. Stacy Brockmeier 25:54 And I think I would just add that make sure that your domain name is pointed correctly to all of your things so that way people can get to them. Yeah, Monica Pitts 26:04 especially when you take your website live. That's pretty important. Or you're gonna lose your email and everything else that your domain name touches. Yay. Stacy Brockmeier 26:15 And it's not a quick fix. A lot of times it is hours to propagate so or days so it's not a quick fix if you don't do it right first time and Monica Pitts 26:24 you won't know you did it wrong for a few days. Stacy Brockmeier 26:28 Yeah, it's too late for hours to days and then your hours today is behind on fixing it. Monica Pitts 26:33 Yay. So great. Stacy Brockmeier 26:38 Like I was a dancer huh Monica Pitts 26:41 was bad. Okay, we went from cakes. To a pain in the butt. That's basically what I deserve. Stacy Brockmeier 26:50 From like yummy cakes to like cakes that don't have baking soda and flour Travis Schumacher 26:55 and they were left on the roundabout and got ran over. Monica Pitts 26:59 Or like one Time Ellis baked like my protein muffins for me in the morning. And she put too much salt in them. It was not good. Israel bad. She like put a tablespoon in into instead of like a half a teaspoon. And then she put like a tablespoon of baking powder and a tablespoon of and it calls for a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon of these elements. And then I got it and I was like Oh, Oh heavens. Like what happened here? It's like a salt bomb came out of my like, chocolate. Muffin moved. Hey, that sounded just like my mom. oofta Okay, friends. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us as we explained domain names and hosting, and how the website works together with all that stuff. If you have questions about this kind of stuff, you know, you can reach out to us right? Like seriously, you can email [email protected] That's ma y e CR ea t e.com. You can even email Travis you can email him at info at tranquillity dotnet. And he's happy to answer your questions too. So you're not in this by yourself. We are more than happy to answer your questions and feel them and if you love this techie geeky stuff, then subscribe to our podcast and we'll get you a new episode every week about all things business marketing websites. Yeah. Okay. Well thank you so much for your time today. And until next time, go forth and market with purpose. Transcribed by https://otter.ai