A domain is your website's address, hosting is the place where your website's files live, and nameservers tell the internet which hosting to ask for your site. You need all three for a website to work. They are bought or set up in different places, which is why it feels confusing at first.
The five terms
| Term | What it is | Where you manage it |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Your address on the internet, such as yourbusiness.com. You rent it by the year. | A domain registrar, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap or Cloudflare |
| Hosting | A computer that is always on and stores your website's files, email and databases, and shows your site to visitors. | Your ABC Teck dashboard |
| Nameservers | The internet's address book entry for your domain. They say which hosting company holds your site. | The registrar, where you replace them with ours |
| DNS records | The individual lines in that address book: where the website is, where email goes, and extra items such as verification codes. | Your dashboard, once your domain uses our nameservers |
| SSL certificate | What makes the address start with https:// and shows the padlock in the browser. | Your dashboard. The certificate is free. |
How they fit together
- You register a domain with a registrar.
- You add the domain to your hosting plan in the dashboard. We set up space for the site.
- You upload your website's files to the hosting.
- At the registrar you change the domain's nameservers to
ns1.abcteck.comandns2.abcteck.com. Now the internet knows to ask our servers for your site. - We add the free SSL certificate once the domain points to us.
Until step 4 is done, the domain still points to wherever it pointed before, so visitors will not see your new site yet. A nameserver change can take up to 48 hours to reach everyone, although it often finishes much sooner.
Common mix-ups
- "I bought a domain, so I have a website." You have an address with nothing at it. You still need hosting and your website's files.
- "I have hosting, so people can already visit." Not until the domain points to it.
- "Hosting and domain have to come from the same company." They do not. Many people keep the domain at a registrar and use another company for hosting.
What to do next
- Put a site online: Put a website made with AI online
- Change your nameservers: Pointing your domain to ABC Teck
- Add a record such as a verification code: Add or remove a DNS record