My ‘think of a website as a house’ analogy

In the midst of our virtual meeting my client asked, “I don’t understand, I thought my domain was my hosting? What is the difference between domain and hosting?”

“Okay, so hear me out.” I said, “Think of a website as if it were a house…”

What is ‘think of a website as a house’?:
An analogy that I use to help my client’s visualize and understand all of the features, components, and services that go into building and launching a website.

If you aren’t familiar with web terminology and what it all means, it can be difficult to understand website services, products, billing, and how-tos. But, if you think of a website as a house, you can start visualizing how each piece of the machine works together!

House Number

Domain:
Let’s start with the most important part of your website: your domain name, or web address.

Your domain is what is entered into a browser to load your website. Each domain is unique, including its characters and the extension you select to use (more on that below). For example, my domain is be3designs.ca.

When you register a domain you are given a set of DNS records. These act like a set of rules for the domain to follow. When we set up website hosting, emails, tracking, or verification, we have to edit these records in order for the domain to know what to do with these requests.

Your house number also acts like a domain in that it is used to specify your unique home from others on the street.

Street Address

Extension:
An extension is what you choose to end your domain name with – like a .com, .ca, or .org. For example, my domain extension is be3designs.ca.

You choose your extension when purchasing and registering your domain. When you do a domain search, you are also required to include its extension.

Extensions are important because your domain name + each available extension is a separate address, meaning you would need to purchase multiple extensions for your domain if you wanted to ensure control over your brand. For example, I could have two different websites at both be3designs.ca and be3designs.com, although I chose to forward the latter to its former.

Your street address acts like a domain extension to help distinguish your neighbourhood from others. Some cities use quadrants (NW, SE, etc.) to help direct traffic and mail to the correct house.

Plot of Land

Hosting:
Since your domain and extension is only an address, nothing would display without website hosting.

Hosting is the service that provides you with the physical server space to create and manage website databases and files. This all needs to be configured and pointed to from your DNS records, so that a working website is displayed when a user navigates to your domain.

The plot of land that your house resides on could be likened to hosting, because without a house it’s an empty lot!

Framing of the House

HTML, PHP, CMS (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix), programming, etc.:
The actual coding that goes into building your website, regardless of its design or content, is like the framing of your house.

In fact, we developers often refer to ‘frameworks’ for websites, which could be compared to pre-built homes that go up more efficiently due to the template nature of the core product.

Interior Design

CSS, design:
Most people have more fun with the design phase whether it’s a house or a website, so it’s easy to think of web design as interior design.

While CSS is a coding language, it’s used to style elements while the programming languages that go into the framework worry more about technical functionality. 

For example, the framing of your house has dictated the number or size of rooms, but those would just stand there without design and layout.

Websites can feel similar when content is populated to the page, but the page itself has poor layout, graphics, or lack thereof.

Rooms

Web pages, content strategy:  
Your website is made up of a number of pages, sometimes many, often several. Some are only a single page, but without these pages of content your website would be blank. 

Housing lots can remain empty after being purchased while the new landowner decides how they want to build their home. And what does a sold sign on an empty lot remind me of? An awful lot like a coming soon or under construction web page!

In both cases, homes and websites need to know what features and content to anticipate so the right rooms and pages can be accounted for.

Furniture

JS, functionality, interactivity:
While some furniture is completely optional, there are expectations of certain instances in the home, such as a bed, table, and chair.

In websites, we expect to be able to include some features out of the box, such as the ability to have contact forms or upload PDFs. Each website’s needs are different though, so advanced features are usually scoped and reviewed beforehand ensuring the framing and content strategy account for this.

If you don’t have a yard or a patio, you’re probably not going to buy an outdoor living set. Heck, if you haven’t bought your lot or started building your house, you’re likely not concerned with furniture just yet.

This is where we really start seeing the correlation between all of these housing and website elements and how they rely on an progressive order, from start to finish.

As soon as you start jumping out of order, or skipping a step, you begin to compromise your site health. Or, the quality of your home.

Layout, Accents, Customization

Content creation, population, accessibility:  
The final touches that really make our websites our own are what we choose to display and deliver on them. Our content.

Extending the interior design analogy here, fine details or additions after the fact, like renovations for accessibility, space, or upgrades are what help customize our homes for our families.

While your website is yours, it differs from a house in that it is really for everyone else. Unless, of course, you have a personal blog that you don’t care if anyone else ever sees, you may be shaking your head at me. But most of us with websites are marketing something to some degree.

Home Office Filing Cabinet 

Blog:
This analogy is what started it all off, and I remember referring back to this as early as college, so I have to assume it’s likely you’ve heard it before. If not, see if it works for you, because it’s helped a lot of my clients better strategize their blogging efforts.

Nodding their head, my client said, “Okay, I understand the domain and hosting. Now, my biggest hang-up is understanding how my blog works. What is a post vs category vs tag? And also, how do I optimize my blog?”

“Okay, so hear me out.” I said, “Think of your blog as if it were a filing cabinet…”

File Cabinet Drawers 

Categories:
Your blog categories are like the labels on your file cabinet’s drawers.

Now keeping in mind every blog will be different and this advice is general, you won’t have too many categories, especially if you have a niche focus for your website content.

If it makes you feel better though, you can imagine more than one file cabinet, I gotchu.

You use categories to help filter your blog posts by topic. For example, my blog uses some of the following categories:

• News and Events
• SEO
• Accessibility

Most website blogging platforms will adhere a custom URL to your created categories, which means you can share this URL to return a page that only features posts under that category. Try this by clicking on the three categories I listed above, you’ll see different post feeds depending on the topic selected.

This is very helpful for readers who may be visiting your blog for a specific purpose and want to filter the content they’re interested in.

For example, I gave any posts that related to my business or local events a separate category so that I could filter them out entirely from most blog feeds on my website. Since they are of local topicality and not of use to most of my readers, they don’t need to be featured as often as other posts do.

File Folders

Blog post title:
Your individual blog posts are like the file folders found within each cabinet’s drawers.

You fill your blog with posts, like you would fill your cabinet with files. Using categories to organize your content, so that it is easy to find by users and readers alike.

File Folder Contents

Blog post, assets, external and internal links, optimization:
The content of each blog post is contained within its file folder in the cabinet.

We use folders to contain related content, much like how each of your posts has its own assets and optimization practices. 

Our posts aren’t typically just a title and single paragraph, there are:

• Multiple subheadings, 
• Content photos and at least a featured image, 
• External and internal linking,
• Lists, blockquotes, or other varying elements of content,
• References or citations, and
• Keywords, and metadata

Labels

Blog tags, cross-references:
Using tags to further filter your posts is like using coloured post-its or other labels to cross-reference information between different file folders.

Tags are different from categories in that they are more specific and likely to come up as a secondary topic under multiple categories.

For example, my blog uses some of the following tags:

• Edmonton
• Google
• WordPress

When I write about SEO or Accessibility, there is often a chance that I discuss Google products or WordPress how-tos within my articles. Tags help us filter content for readers like we can with categories. You’ll notice my list above links out to these tag URLs just like category URLs.

💡 Tip: Don’t go overboard on your tagging. You do not need to create a tag for every keyword you could possibly think of. That will hinder your site more than promote it. Be strategic, think of what helps strengthen your existing content efforts but also what benefits your readers.

Utilities

Third party integrations like Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, Email Forms + SMTP, policies:
Once our homes are built, we have to connect to services that are managed by other companies, such as our gas, water, electricity, waste, or internet services.

Once our websites are built, depending on our needs, we need to connect it to the third-party integrations that we use to do things like:

• Track traffic and user data,
• Securely send contact form information via email,
• Connect with CRM tools, or
• Invoicing, shipping, or payment terminal functions

Home Inspection

Website audits, scans, remediation, reviews, strategies, etc.:
Houses are valuable assets. We inspect them before we buy or move-in, we invest time and money into upkeep or renovations to make it more secure and comfortable, in turn, it provides for us too.

I think you know where I’m going with this. 

Our websites require the same type of investment, because not only is technology constantly evolving, but we as users and humans are too.

So, we have things like website auditing, accessibility remediation scans, content strategy, re-brands and redesigns, etc. etc. etc. Because our websites evolve with us!

Think of a website as a house

As you can see, the steps that go into building and maintaining a house are very similar to the process of developing a website.

Even if you plan to use a drag and drop builder, template, or hire a web designer, consider that there are background features, services, and products that go into a successful website project.

Think of a website as a house and plan accordingly!