# Setting up a Decentralised Website (ENS + IPFS = dWeb)


By [Your Key Your Coin](https://paragraph.com/@your-key-your-coin) · 2022-06-20

---

One thing that I’ve been really into lately has been ENS names. As someone who’s already obsessed with buying domain names, ENS names have been an even greater obsession (mostly because of emoji names, like `✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾.eth`)!

So what are ENS names, exactly? And what is a “decentralised website”?

A short intro to ENS, IPFS, and the dWeb
----------------------------------------

Let’s start with ENS. The **Ethereum Name Service** is a naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. It has a lot of parallels with the Internet’s Domain Name Service (DNS) in that both of these services are used to map human-readable names to less human-readable characters. Where DNS names map to IP addresses, ENS names can map to cryptocurrency addresses, content hashes, and other metadata.

For example, I have the ENS name `bitsofcode.eth`, which maps to the ETH address `0x3ca2FC4f1F207178Fee25a9Aa8676ec00292dcfc`. If someone (👀) wanted to send me Ether, they could simply put in the ENS name instead of copying and pasting the longer, less user friendly, address.

As I mentioned, ENS names can map on to more than just cryptocurrency addresses, and this is where the really fun part comes in. In addition to metadata like a website or twitter username, we can also map an ENS name to what’s called a **content hash**. A content hash, similar to an IP address, is a unique identifier for hosted content, i.e. files. However, unlike IP addresses that are based on a _location_ where content is stored, content hashes are based on the _content_ itself. This may not make a lot of sense now,  but we’ll see how this distinction matters when we setup our dWebsite below.

So how and where do we host these files? That’s where IPFS comes in! The **InterPlanetary File System** is a “distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data”. Unlike other hosting options which have a centralised server, IPFS is ✨decentralised✨. It’s powered by a peer-to-peer network that stores and relays content as needed. If you’ve ever used BitTorrent, it’s a very similar concept.

Both ENS and IPFS together form the **Decentralised Web** - websites that are hosted via a decentralised system such as IPFS, and accessed via a decentralised name service such as ENS.

---

*Originally published on [Your Key Your Coin](https://paragraph.com/@your-key-your-coin/setting-up-a-decentralised-website-ens-ipfs-dweb)*