[Sub Domain Question] Not administrator / I am hosted

Kevin Darcy kcd at daimlerchrysler.com
Thu Sep 6 21:41:28 UTC 2001


Joy wrote:

> On 6 Sep 2001 11:45:22 -0700, Barry Margolin <barmar at genuity.net>
> wrote:
>
> >In article <9n8f02$6i3 at pub3.rc.vix.com>, Joy  <invalidemail at address.net> wrote:
> >>I am hosted with www.readyhosting.com on Win2K servers and have a
> >>registered domain in denmark (.dk)  ex.  http://www.fake.dk through
> >>www.websolutions.com and would love to have sub domains like
> >>http://portfolio.fake.dk or http://personal.fake.dk
> >
> >Why do you consider www.fake.dk a domain and portfolio.fake.dk to be a
> >subdomain?  Aren't they both at the same level of the DNS hierarchy?  In
> >common parlance, fake.dk is the domain and both www.fake.dk and
> >portfolio.fake.dk are hostnames within in that domain.  It's only common to
> >call something a subdomain if you're going to create names within it,
> >e.g. www.portfolio.fake.dk.
> >
>
> I did have my suspicions that sub-domain was incorrect but I found
> some companies describe them as so, ex: a tool-tip on an ad for
> www.web.com goes like this "Easy-to-remember yourname.web.com sub
> domains with redirect or dns service" and another ad link for
> shortUrl.com also mentions sub domain in the same fashion.  On neither
> site do I actually see the word 'sub-domain."

"subdomain" is a relative term. yourname.web.com is a subdomain of web.com, but
foo.web.com and yourname.web.com are at the same domain level and thus neither is a
subdomain of the other.

> So, is "hostname" the correct term that I should approach my webhost
> with?

It's fine to use the term "subdomain", if the context is correct. What you'd be
asking for is a subdomain of fake.dk. The only problem here is that you said you
had registered www.fake.dk and you wanted to create subdomains portfolio.fake.dk
and personal.fake.dk. That's impossible, by definition. It would be like saying
your sibling just gave birth to your grandchild.

"Hostname" is even more confusing, since sometimes people take that to mean just
the first label of the domain name, e.g. "www" or "portfolio" or "personal".

Perhaps the safest thing to ask for is a "domain name".


- Kevin





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