When DNS resolves an IP address from the host name, does it give the IP address of the website or the server hosting the website?

Looks like we cannot have an IP address for a website. Am I right?

For that domain name.

does that domain need to be a fully qualified domain name?

The IP address belongs to whomever owns the net block that contains it.

The DNS is nothing more than a mapping of names to IP addresses. The management of Domain names and IP addresses is completely separate, the DNS system exists to join the two together.

If we go back to your question "Does a website have an IP address?" well if you want to access it on the Internet then it must have one else it would be useless and inaccessible.

However a slightly different question "Does a website have a unique IP address?" is a little harder to answer as there is no requirement for a website to have a unique IP addresses, the HTTP protocol allows you to serve unique content based on the HTTP request itself.

FYI HTTPS does require unique IP addresses for different sites but that is a whole other subject.

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