What is a Domain Name? What does it mean to have it registered?
A domain name is the name of your company on the web, like www.amazon.com or www.birds.net. You must apply for a domain name with a domain registrar. It's like registering a business name. Someone has to keep track of all the names out there and make sure that when a user types in your URL that they get to your page. ICANN is the organization behind this. Wavian Web Design can do your domain name registration for you or you can register for one yourself. It's a good idea to see if your idea for a domain name is already taken - you can check in numerous places (like www.dotster.com or www.godaddy.com).
What is a URL? And what does HTTP and HTML stand for?
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the address of your site. My URL is http://www.wavian.com. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, but there are other transfer protocols too, like FTP (file transfer protocol). Web pages are written in HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language. It is not a programming language, but rather a markup language. It doesn't do anything special like programming languages can do, it just specifies how a page should look (like what should be bold and whatnot). Though HTML is simple, there are lots of tricky factors to consider when making a web page. There's a ton of terrific info out there if you are interested in learning.
What does .com, .net, etc. mean?
There were traditionally only a few types of extensions. .edu stood for educational institution, .com stood for company, .gov stood for a governmental institution, .mil for military, .net for an Internet company and .org for a nonprofit organization. Presently though, there are no longer any restrictions on who can own which extension. Now anyone can buy .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info. There are also country designations after URLs other than those located in the U.S. If my company were located in England, the URL would be www.wavian.com.uk (for United Kingdom). In Taiwan, it would be www.wavian.com.tw.
What is a search engine?
A program that searches the web for keywords that you give it. Like Google (www.google.com) or Altavista (www.altavista.com).
If you know the exact URL (e.g.: www.wavian.com), you don't need to use a search engine - just type it in your browser window. Sometimes this can be confusing because when you open Netscape (for example), you are looking at Netscape's search box, but that's not where to type in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or Web address). You type it in the place where you see the http://blahblahblah address already there. (Or click on 'file', 'open', and type it in the window that opens up.)