I am building a webserver / email server, for personal uses, that will be directed to the outside world. My question upon building this server is something I for the first time pondered. I'm wondering if you can make your full hostname just your "domain" name?

Example:

Instead of:

host.server.com

just putting in

server.com

this way it matches your www address? Does it really have to have a 3 part system?

Are there any draw backs to use using your domain name?

www.domain.com is a service. davesserver.domain.com is a machine name, and they are used in different ways, and what you're asking seems very much unnecessary. to "match" www. you configure whatever server software your using, e.g. apache for http services, to respond to that name. It's inconsequential what the name of the actual tin is.

Thanks!,, I was just wondering if you would actually run into any problems by creating the host name as just server.com instead of it being something like computer.server.com when it came time to registering it to a web address. It was just a passing thought as I was building my server and I realized, I don't know. As in a Microsoft world if your building a domain controller, you don't have the ability to "not name the server" and just reference the domain as the server. Were as in a Linux world the OS doesn't seem to really care.

But I see what you mean as those two wouldn't have any type of relationship to each other at all since they don't identify with each other in that way. At the time that I wrote the question I didn't consider the angle that the service doesn't even recognize the computer name or internal dns, it just looks for the external ip.

A DC matters, sure, but even with Windows, IIS can host any website name you wish to throw at it.