Where should I buy and manage domains?
Buy from Namecheap (affordable, free WHOIS privacy) or Cloudflare (at-cost pricing). Use Cloudflare for DNS management (free, fast, with CDN and DDoS protection) or AWS Route 53 for AWS-heavy projects. You can use a different DNS provider than your registrar.
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More FAQs in What Is a Domain Name and How DNS Works A Guide for Node.js Developers
A domain name is a human-readable address for a website (e.g., yourdomain.com) that maps to an IP address. It consists of a TLD (.com), domain (yourdomain), and optional subdomain (api, www). Domain names are memorable, professional, required for SSL, and stable even when IP addresses change.
DNS translates domain names to IP addresses. When you visit a domain, your browser checks cache, then the recursive DNS server, then root nameserver, TLD nameserver, and domain nameserver to get the A record (IP address). This takes milliseconds and is cached at each level.
Create an A record: Type A, Name (api for subdomain or @ for root), Value (your EC2 Elastic IP address), TTL 300 for testing or 3600 for production. This maps the domain name to your server's IP address.
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