What's the difference between domain, sub-domain, URL, and website address?
We get many questions about what options are available for the Domain/URL/Website address of a B2B or B2C storefront. Before we can answer this, some background might be helpful.
URL vs. Website Address
“http://www.Pressero.com” is what's known as a Universal Resource Locator
or URL for short. Many simply call it a website address. You really don't need to add the “http://” when you enter a web address in your web browser, it will know to use it.
Root Domain vs. Sub-Domain
For the “http://www.Pressero.com” example, the website address has two parts...
Pressero.com is what is called a “root domain.” Think of the street address for an apartment building.
“www” is called a sub-domain. Think of it as an apartment number in the apartment building. Tip: You can have as many sub-domains as you want for your root domain! Sub-domains can be whatever you want, but only letters, numbers and the dash symbol are allowed in sub-domains.
Often, a website address will be setup so both the “www” sub-domain and the root domain (without the www) point to the same website. For example, both Pressero.com and www.Pressero.com will take you to the same website. But it does not need to work that way! The sub-domain www.Pressero.com could take you to a completely different website.
Different Stores, Different Sub-Domains, Same Root Domain
This trick can be used to your advantage when setting up different stores in Pressero. The sub-domains can be used for different markets, different products, different customers. Each of your stores can use a different sub-domain of the root domain you own. In other words, if your root domain was "example.com", you could have store1.example.com, and store2.example.com, and pheonix.example.com, and bizcards.example.com, and 1st-National-bank.example.com, etc. Each of these subdomains could point to a different B2C or B2B storefront that you created in Pressero.
Related topics:
Ch. 018b Understanding DNS and SSL for your websites
Ch. 034 Domains Tab in Settings