Understanding the Difference Between Domain Registration, DNS Management, and WordPress Hosting

And why major DNS outages can make it look like your site is down when it’s not.

You’re not the only one who has ever been confused about the difference between your domain name, DNS settings, and website hosting. Even business owners who have had websites for years often get these mixed up or think that the same company takes care of all of them. We deal with this at Zinger Web Design almost every week. It’s one of those things that seems easy until something goes wrong, and then it’s clear that each piece has a completely different job.

A major DNS provider goes down every now and then, which affects a lot of the internet. When this happens, a lot of WordPress sites look like they’re down, even though their hosting servers are working fine. This is the best example of how these systems rely on each other and how a problem with one pillar can make the whole structure look like it’s falling apart.

Let’s break down these three parts of your website’s architecture and how they work together behind the scenes to make this easier to understand.

Your Domain Name: The Address That People Type

Your domain name is like the sign on the front of your store. Yourname.com is the part that people know. Buying or renewing a domain name doesn’t make or save your website. There is no real “life” at a domain registrar. It’s just the place that keeps your name’s license safe.

People often think that their domain name includes hosting or email, but that’s not true. It doesn’t know where anything is on its own. It is waiting for DNS records to let it know.

Most domain registrars offer hosting or email as extras, which is where things get confusing. Even if the same company sells them, those are two different services. You can register your domain in one place, host your website in another, and handle DNS in a third place. The domain stays the same, but the parts that make it work can be anywhere.

DNS: The Internet’s Traffic Director That Tells It Where to Go

Clients have the hardest time understanding DNS, and that’s not surprising. People don’t see or interact with DNS. It’s a system that works behind the scenes every second to change your domain name into the IP address of your server.

If your domain is the sign on the building, DNS is the whole road system that gets people to the front door.

DNS doesn’t keep your website or control what it says. It’s just a set of rules that tells a computer, “Send people to this server when they type this domain.” Your website can be fully online, your hosting server can be working perfectly, and everything can still look down to the outside world without DNS. And that’s exactly what happens when a big DNS provider goes down for a long time.

Even though WordPress hosting servers are still up and running, millions of websites can become unreachable because DNS lookups can’t finish. The information is available online. The servers are up and running. The domains are real. But the traffic doesn’t have a “map” to follow. That’s what makes DNS powerful and weak.

This is a reminder for businesses that DNS is an important part of making sure your website works. Hosting companies like Zinger Web Design can also help keep an eye on and set up DNS, but we can’t stop global DNS outages. When a provider goes down, every website that is connected to it is affected, no matter how good the hosting environment is.

WordPress Hosting: Where Your Website Really Lives

Lastly, hosting is where your WordPress site is actually stored. The server environment is where all the files, images, databases, themes, and other things that make up your website are kept. If DNS is the map and the domain is the sign, hosting is the building where everything happens.

We take care of this part directly for our clients at Zinger Web Design. We take care of everything that affects how your site runs, like the server environment, security, backups, updates, and performance optimization. If clients’ websites are loading slowly, not working right, or need updates, that’s all on the hosting side.

But even with the best hosting, your site needs DNS to do its job of sending traffic to it. If DNS fails somewhere in the internet’s chain, visitors may see errors even though the hosting server is fully operational.

And this brings us back to how important it is to know how these systems work together.

When DNS stops working, everything else seems to be offline.

Every year or two, a big DNS provider goes down, which affects big platforms, hosting companies, and small business websites that people use every day. When a provider that big goes down, a lot of people on the internet feel it. Sites with reliable hosting go offline not because the host is down, but because their DNS provider can’t be reached.

This can be frustrating for clients: “Why is my website down if you’re my hosting company?” The answer is that hosting is one part and DNS is another, and they work on their own. We can take care of your hosting. We can help you set up DNS. But we can’t stop an outage on a global scale, just like a local business can’t stop a power outage in the whole city even if their building isn’t having any problems.

The good news is that these outages don’t happen very often and don’t last very long. But they are a good reminder of how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep your WordPress site up and running.

Why Business Owners Should Care About This, and Educate Themselves on the Basics

If something goes wrong with a website, knowing if it’s a hosting problem, a DNS problem, or a domain problem can save you a lot of trouble. A lot of the time, when people say “my website is broken,” they don’t mean that the website itself is broken. The domain expired at times. There were times when DNS was set up wrong. Sometimes a service from a third party goes down. Sometimes hosting is to blame, but not always.

We help our clients understand these moving parts at Zinger Web Design, which is part of the value we offer. You don’t have to worry about the technical side because we take care of hosting and maintenance. But we also help clients set up their DNS, manage their domains, renew their domains, and make sure everything works together smoothly.

The internet is a network of computers. If one part fails, it can temporarily affect the whole chain. When things like this happen, it reminds you of how much work goes into keeping your WordPress site up and running and working the way it should.