I bought a domain name recently. Once it was transferred from the owner's registrar to my own, the best domain registrar ever - Hover.com (use code mynameiskate for 10% off domains at Hover), I needed to change the name servers and then one of the records in my host file so that the domain would now point to the new website I had set up for it.
A lot of you who are reading this have now put your fingers in your ears, closed your eyes and started singing "la la la la la la geeky stuff la la la la". Stop it. Breathe. As a marketer or a PR person who conducts some of their craft on the Internet, it behooves you to know the tiniest bit about how it works. It will make you a better communicator and a better person. Kind of like eating your veggies.
Name Servers. Name servers maintain a directory that match domain names (like www.mynameiskate.ca) to IP addresses (like 204.9.177.195). And that means that I only need to remember the human-friendly domain name and not all the numbers of an IP address when I type it into my browser.
Host Files. These are the plain-text files that contain the individual directory entries for the name server. Host files allow me to do a lot of interesting things, not the least of which is to have different services running on different machines (e.g. my email and my blog are run on different servers) and allows me to have sub-domains off my main domain.
Propagation. When you make changes to your name server or host file, it can take a little while for all of the other name servers around the world to get the message. So there can be a period of time while all the name servers get the new address mapping. This can happen if you're switching domains or putting content on a new domain. That's why it's important that marketers build in time in their campaigns for their sassy new domain names to propagate.
Domain Information Groper. Sometimes, when you want to check on what the rest of the world thinks your domain mappings to be (as opposed to what you have put in your host file), you can use a Domain Information Groper (DIG) tool to query other name servers about what they think the official mapping for your domain is. The DIG tool is usually a command line on a unix server, but sometimes very clever and helpful folks build web interfaces to it. I had been using a dig interface that apparently wasn't updating very often, so the helpful folks at Hover pointed me to one of their fav tools - digwebinterface.com (built by Martin Holk Rasmussen). It's quite a nice interface. This is the output for www.mynameiskate.ca:
I know, I know .. to some of you that may not seem like either sexy or helpful output, but really, it is. :)
Note for the hard core geeks in the crowd - remember, this is written for tech-curious marketers. I'm sure I've missed a lot of the nuance of the wonder of name servers and host files. But as long as the basic ideas are correct, please don't flame too much in the comments :)