by Charles Miller

Exactly what is a "domain"? Most dictionaries define "domain" as territory owned or controlled by someone. On the internet a domain is a name such as "apple.com" or "microsoft.com" and understanding what a domain name is can be helpful at times. As the internet has grown in popularity over the last few decades, the demand for new domain names has created a sometimes-confusing situation.

The situation is less confusing when you know more about how addresses on the internet are structured. An internet domain is broken down into two main elements: TLD (Top Level Domain) and SLD (Second Level Domain), each of which could be further divided as needed.

The TLD (Top Level Domain) is what comes after the period. In the beginning the first TLDs were ".com" for commercial, ".gov" for U.S. government, and ".edu" for educational institutions.

Until 1998 domain names were purchased from the U.S. Department of Commerce, a service that has now been privatized. As countries other than the United States wanted to have their own addresses, this led to the creation of country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with every country having its own code such as ".mx" for Mexico. The original Top-Level Domains are still referred to as TLDs or sometimes as generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Generic TLDs and country-code TLDs can be used together which is why you sometimes see addresses such as ".com.mx," meaning a commercial address in Mexico. At present there are about 200 country code TLDs and there has been a proliferation of hundreds of different generic TLDs such as ".info", ".biz," and many more.

The SLD (Second Level Domain) is what precedes the TLD, found to the left before the dot. In the case of the web page you are probably looking at now, "lokkal" is the second-level domain. Perhaps now you better understand that every domain is made up with an SLD (such as "lokkal") followed by a TLD (such as ".com").

Second Level Domains can also be subdivided allowing organizations to create a clear hierarchy within their domain structure. This can help in categorizing different departments within a company. Point your browser to google.com for their main page, but you could also type in maps.google.com and you will find (drum roll) Google Maps, or mail.google.com takes you to Gmail. In the previous sentence, "maps" and "mail" are subdomains of google.com.

What comes after the domain is called the "path" and almost always starts with a forward slash / character. Take a look at the address bar in the browser you are using now. You should see "https://www.lokkal.com/sma/magazine/2026/october/domain.php" displayed there.

Breaking that address down into its parts, "https://www" is a prefix telling that the address is on the World Wide Web, "lokkal: is the Second Level Domain, ".com" is the Top Level Domain, "/sma/magazine/2026/october/" is the path where the web page is located on the server and finally "domains.php" is the file name on the server for that web page.

And now for a tip you might actually be able to use. Sometimes when surfing the web here in Mexico your browser might display the page in Spanish and stubbornly refuse to change to English. Examine the domain name shown in the address bar to see if it includes something like "es-mx" (Espanol-Mexico) in the subdomain or path. If it does, try to change "es.mx" to "en-us" (English-United States) then press [Enter] to see if that changes the language from Spanish to English. Sometimes that works.

A similar trick can sometimes work with the country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). If you get stuck on a German language page such as yahoo.de (dot de is Germany); try changing the ".de" to ".uk" to find an English version of that page if it exists. Sometimes that works too.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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