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I imagine this must be a basic question for any system administrator, but I am failing to find a simple step-by-step guide.

I am managing a web server with a static IP address in the standard form 137.xxx.xxx.xx and I would like to associate it to a "user friendly" name, such as homosapiens.org What is the suggested procedure to follow? I think I will have to rent a domain name first with a registrar, but then I am not sure how to link the name to the IP. And given the vast noise on the internet, I am also looking for a philosophical explanation on how the process works.

Thrawn
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    " I am also looking for a philosophical explanation on how the process works." Unfortunately this is not the way this website works, as it targets more concrete and specific questions. To help you quickly, yes, you register a domain name, then choose nameservers for your name (and better not to handle that yourself if you are not already fully aware how the DNs works) and inside the nameservers configuration (through some GUI or API depending on the provider) you will map given names to given addresses. – Patrick Mevzek Jun 16 '20 at 13:33

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What you are looking for is the Domain Name System (DNS). When you purchase a domain through the usual provides (OVH, Hetzner, GoDaddy, ...) they will provide you with their DNS servers for free. So, in general: once you purchased a domain, you can just configure the DNS records through their web portal. Their documentation usually should contain details about how to do that.

For example, you would configure an A record for homosapiens.org and www.homosapiens.org to 137.1.2.3. A record just means a record which points from a domain name to a static IP. There are many more record types, another common one is the CNAME record which allows to point to another domain. Explaining all the details here would take quite a long answer, but you should find many detailed resources when googling for "domain name system" (or as mentioned above, just look at the documentation of however sold you the domain name).

Just have a look at the following screenshot from OVHs documentation, I guess the interface is pretty self explaining:

OVH documentation DNS records

miho
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