Domain Names and the Domain Name System (DNS)

Domain Names

Domain names are essential for a website to work. They are the equivalent to a postal address for a house and are what you can write into a web browser to find a website or put on a car or advert if you want people to find you.

Example of a domain name: www.siterunner.nz

Domain names are essentially rented from a non-for-profit agency that administers them. That agency (annoyingly) contracts out the management of the domains to private companies where people like us can pay to own/rent a domain name for our web properties. These companies manage the DNS Settings for the domains registered with them.

Our domain name www.siterunner.nz is registered with 1stdomains.nz it costs us about $30nzd per year

DNS Settings

When you register a Domin Name you need to register in the Domain Name System (DNS) where the actual machine, or server, the website lives on is. Every device on the internet has a unique IP address and this is what the Domain Name needs to point website visitors to.

This is an example of DNS settings for our Domain Name www.siterunner.nz: