Making sense of the web address system for practice websites

The IT world is punch-drunk on acronyms. This creates a chronic problem for medical practices just trying to manage the basics of their websites.

As if website-related letter combinations such as FTP, CMS and HTML aren’t confusing enough, here’s another one that comes up often for practices, usually when it’s time to launch a new website: DNS.

We spend a fair amount of time explaining this term to practice administrators and marketers. This term usually raises its head just prior to a website relaunch but also whenever there’s a change in the site administration – when a new web person or firm takes over the site.

It’s important to remember that a website is generally little more than a collection of electronic documents containing computer code. This code is stored on a host computer somewhere. The host machine is called a “server,” and it usually is a computer owned by a commercial hosting service such as GoDaddy or Register.com. But it can be almost any modern computer anywhere, including a simple desktop or laptop.

Server, one order of magic, please!

When an Internet user wants to look at a website, she enters a web address into a browser window such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox on her own computer monitor. Then, through Internet magic (not really), a web page appears in the browser on her computer.

Where does this page come from? Why, a web server, of course.

The server merely transmits its stored code for that particular website over the Internet to the computer of the person requesting it. The receiving computer is thus the “client,” and all that happens on the client computer is that the Internet browser contains software that converts the incoming code to web pages.

Voila. Suddenly appears a web page visible to anyone with a computer, a browser and an Internet connection.

But with millions of computers on the Internet, how does the client computer find the one and only server for this website? Through the DNS, which stands for “domain name system.”

Yes, Virginia, we still use phone books

The domain name system is the phone book of the Internet. While we know websites by names such as WebMD.com and Google.com and NYTimes.com, true website addresses are located through servers assigned either 10- or 11-digit numbers such as 208.77.188.166. These number combinations are part of the Internet Protocol system, or “IP addresses,” a worldwide standard established many years ago so that any computer on the Internet can find nearly any other computer on the ‘Net.

But what a pain it would be to try to remember 10 or 11 digits. Instead, we have the DNS, which allows us to use Internet “domain names” such as Amazon.com or Example.com. These kinds of Internet addresses are Uniform Resource Locators, or “URL addresses.”

URLs are worlds easier to remember than IP addresses. Now, whenever you type a URL address into your browser window, a system of web servers on the Internet looks up the IP address automatically and then knows where to send your request.

These special servers are like telephone switching boxes – a call comes into a box and a series of hand-offs to other boxes eventually routes the call to the intended destination at a single telephone. Or, in this case, to the server holding the website code to be sent to the requesting client.

The DNS handles all this for you, the website owner, and processes all the traffic on the Internet at the speed of moving electrons.

Managing your DNS account

Therefore, any medical practice with a website needs a DNS account, much like a telephone account. This account is established with for-profit agencies accredited by the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Examples include GoDaddy.com, Register.com and MyHosting.com – formally known as DNS registrars.

So a medical practice can go to any of these agency websites and search for available names. If the DNS name that the practice wants – say, “GreatDoctors.com” – is available, the practice can reserve it for around $10 a year.

The name is reserved by filling out an online form asking for 1) a domain registrant (the practice in this case), 2) an administrative contact and 3) a technical contact. These contacts can be three different people or all the same person.

Probably the best approach is to register a practice shareholder or partner as the domain registrant and a web specialist as the technical contact. That way, the account stays with the practice, while a more technically inclined delegate can handle the minutiae of administrating the account, including renewing the account when it comes due.

All of this is completely separate from hosting services. Registrars such as GoDaddy and MyHosting make their real money from offering hosting on top of DNS registrations. Hosting a website can cost anywhere from $5 or $10 a month up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars monthly for extremely complex sites with heavy traffic.

We’ll address some of the details of hosting in another blog posting. For now, it’s easiest to remember a DNS registration as equivalent to a telephone account on the Internet. The best news is that instead of monthly bills for your telephone service, for a DNS account you pay a small amount just once a year.