Useful for:
- People who want to understand what the differences between domain type are..
Not relevant for:
- N/a
More technical help:
- Domain Requirement Proposal 1984 tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920.
- wikipedia.org/wiki/TLD.
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-level_domain.
Use the tags along the bottom of this article to explore other related posts.
Domain names on the internet are the human friendly names we give to an address on the internet. Your browser uses this name to get the actual address of the domain (see our article “How Does: Your Browser Know Where to get Web Pages From“). At its most basic level, a domain is in the form xxxxxxxxxx.yyy. This is called a Top Level Domain (TLD), you can tell this as there is only one full stop in the address. Examples of TLDs are:-
.com
.net
.org
.biz
.me
Each country has a TLD as well for example .uk, .pl, .fr or .gp. Many countries also have sub categories which are called Second Level Domains (SLDs). In the UK we have
.ac.uk – academic (tertiary education and research establishments) and learned societies
.co.uk – general use (usually commercial)
.gov.uk – government (central and local)
.ltd.uk – limited companies
.me.uk – general use (usually personal)
.mod.uk – Ministry of Defence and HM Forces public sites
.net.uk – ISPs and network companies
.nhs.uk – National Health Service institutions
.nic.uk – network use only (Nominet UK)
.org.uk – general use (usually for non-profit organisations)
.parliament.uk – parliament (MPs, etc, and also the Scottish Parliament)
.plc.uk – public limited companies
.police.uk – police forces
.sch.uk – local education authorities, schools, primary and secondary education, community education
The SLD .nic.uk is only for use by Nominet. Some of the other UK SLDs have their uses rigorously controlled and can only be registered through special bodies. These are .ac.uk, .gov.uk, .mod.uk, .nhs.uk, .parliament.uk, .police.uk and .sch.uk. The SLDs .ltd.uk, .net.uk and .plc.uk have special rules as to who can register them but can be registered by any tag holder as long as the registrant fits the bill. The ones remaining .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk are largely unregulated so anyone can register them through a tag holder. If you are interested in registering a domain then please look at our prices at southcot.co.uk/Products/Domains.php if you have a domain already you might be interested in our hosting packages at southcot.co.uk/Products/Hosting.php.