Web Hosting Terms
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Adult Web Hosting
Some web hosting companies to not allow web sites with adult content. If you are looking to have a site with adult content make sure the hosting provider will allow you to do so.
Audio/Video Streaming
This is when there is some sort of audio or video content on the web site, such as mucic or a video. This usually takes up a large amount of bandwidth.
Make sure the web hosting plan you get has enough bandwidth to handle this if you would like to stream music.
Auto Responder
Auto Responder is a program for your email that will automatically send a previously prepared response email to the person that sent the email to you. This is mostly used to acknowledge that you have received the email. Most web hosting companies have this feature.
Availabilty (Uptime)
This is the time that your site is up and active. Most web hosting providers have at least a 99% or more uptime. This means that 1% of the time your web site will not be accessible to anyone.
Backbone
The principal data routes between networks and core routers in the internet. Basically the better the backbone of the hosting company the better your web site will run.
Backups
Web host companies take the data on their servers and make a copy of it so that you can restore the original after a data loss event.
Many web host companies provide a regular back up. You most likely will never need to use this feature but it is very, very useful if the situation comes around. Look for a web host company with this
service.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the rate of visitors that click into your web site and leave very, very shortly after that. This is a way to track how many people actually stay on your site. If the bounce rate is high people don’t like something about your site within about 3 seconds of being on it.
Browser
This is an application that is used for showing web pages. It retrieves, presents, and traverses information resources on the internet.
Every browser works a little differently. Pages created may work better on one browser than the other or even look a bit different but usually the differences are small.
C++
C++ is a programming language used in software for systems software, application software, device drivers, embedded software, high-performance server and client applications, and entertainment software such as video games.
Clickthrough
This is the amount that something is clicked on compared with the number of times it is shown. For example, if an advertisement is shown 100 times and clicked on 5 times you have a 5% clickthrough ratio.
Control Panel
Control Panel is an online way for you to upload your web site and to manage and edit it. Most web hosting companies have this; if they do not you will not want to go with them. It is an ease factor. If your web hosting company does not have this it will more difficult to set up your site, add email, etc.
Cookie
Also known as a web cookie, browser cookie, or http cookie. It is a piece of text stored by a user’s web browser used to authenticate, store site preferences, shopping cart contents, and anything else that could be accomplished through storing text data on your browser.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
CSS is a style sheet language used to describe the look and formatting of your web site. It is used so that the web page can look the same in each browser and also have the same layout, colors, and fonts.
Data Transfer
Data transfer is the amount to data that is transferred when a person visits your web page. The more images, videos, or audio increases this amount. As a general rule, if you do not have many videos or audio, 500 MB of data transfer is equal to about 20,000 page views.
Dedicated Web Server
A dedicated server is a server you lease from a web hosting company to host your web site and you do not share that server with anyone. You have full control over the server and can choose the operating system, hardware, etc.
Disk Space
The diskspace is the amount of space that the web host company has available to store your web site’s files. Usually HTML files are small and don’t take up much room so this shouldn’t be a problem.
If you have a site with lots of pages or something more complex such as a database or a lot of graphics or videos you will need more space than a normal web site.
A good rule of thumb is to assume approx. 50 KB per page (1 MB = 1000 KB, 1 GB = 1000 MB). 50 KB per page is on the high side so it’s a conservative estimate for the average size of a web page.
Domain Name
Domain Name is a unique name that identifies your web site. It is something like example.com. This is also know as your fully qualified domain name (FQDN), or top level domain (meaning there isn’t anything before the domain name like secure.domain.com).
Domain Name Registration
Domain name registration is where you claim the domain you wish. You basically do this by purchasing the domain and you register it by putting your information. You can search this information, known as the WHOIS, on almost any web hosting company’s web site.
Some web hosting companies will register and re-register your domain name as long as you host your web site with them. You register domains in years. Part of the monthly fee you pay to your web hosting provider may go to re-register your domain name, other web hosting companies charge you each time you re-register your domain.
Domain Parking
Domain Parking is when a web site is not up and running but there is a coming soon page or something like that. People domain park to either hold on to a domain name while the site is being built, they don’t want to use the domain name as of yet, or they want to sell the domain. If you want to see how owns the domain you can do a WHOIS search at DomainTools.com.
Domain Pointing
Domain pointing is when you have one domain go to a different one. For example if you mis-type google.com and put googel.com the site googel.com is also owned by Google and is pointed to go to google.com. So you will never know that you mis-typed google.com because it will end up there anyway. Or you can use this if you have 2 domains for the same thing like a site we have,CompareThatFax.com and CompareFax.com. They both end up at CompareThatFax.com.
DNS (Domain Name System)
Domain name system is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resources connected to the internet. It translates domain names into IP address. You can think of it kind of like the phone book; we see names it sees unique numbers to associate the name with.
Email Pop Account
POP (Post Office Protocol) is an actual e-mail account on your web host’s e-mail server. Think of each POP account as a unique email address (your.name@YourSite.com, info@YourSite.com, etc.). There are several versions such as POP3
FTP
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a way of transferring (uploading and downloading) files over the internet. It is usually accessed by password on-line and then the user is able to upload and download files.
Host Platform
Host Platform refers to which type of software the web hosting company is using. Usually they use either Windows or UNIX. Some web hosting companies have the option to use either. If your web site is basic you will not need to worry which host platform you use.
HTML
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is Hypertext Markup Language. This is the code that web pages are written in. Browsers interpret HTML so you can see the web page in an easy to view/read format.
HTTP
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is how files are transferred over the internet.
IP Address
IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique set of numbers used to specify hosts and networks. IP address are used for identifying machines that are connected to the internet. An example of an IP address is something like 123.456.78.901. Every machine that connects to the internet has a unique IP address, this is how your web site can track who comes to your web site.
ISP
Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company or institution that provides access to the Internet in some form, usually for money. They will usually allow users to dial up through a modem, DSL, or cable connection to view the information on the Internet Access is via SLIP, PPP, or TCP/IP. Picking your ISP is an important decision but has more to do with how you access the Internet rather than which host you choose. Your or your web site’s visitor’s internet service provider will not affect viewing your web site.
Javascript
A scripting language which enables web designers to add dynamic, interactive elements to a web site.
MySQL
MySQL is a relational database management system. It provides a multi-user access to a number of databases.
PHP
PHP is another scripting language. It’s commands are embedded within the HTML of a web page. The commands are executed on the web server, making it browser independent. The web browser only sees the resulting HTML output of the PHP code.
POP
POP (Post Office Protocol) is a method of retrieving e-mail from an e-mail server. Most e-mail applications (sometimes called an e-mail client) use the POP, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).
POP3
POP3 is a version of POP.
Root Server
A machine that has the software and data needed to locate name servers that contain authoritative data for the top-level domains.
Server
Server is a computer that is a host that is used to execute one or more programs.
Shared Web Hosting
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting. Most people us this type of web hosting. It is exactly what it sounds like. It is a web hosting server that is shared with other people. Everyone has their own section of the server that they use. This is done to lower the cost of web hosting. The other type of web hosting is dedicated hosting.
Shopping Cart
A shopping cart refers to the ability to have a place on your web site where people can add items to a list of things they want to purchase. When the customer is on your web site they can check out and purchase all of the items were on the list, in their shopping carts.
SMTP
SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol. SMTP is an internet standard for email transmission acrossed IP networks. STMP is specified for outgoing mail.
SSL
SSL stands for secure socket layer. This is how to keep information entered in on your web page secure. When any information is entered (such as a password, credit card, etc) the information is sent from the server to others servers until it reaches where your web site is hosted. If your information is not secured with an SSL the information could be seen by any of the servers that it bounces to on the way to your hosting web site.
If your web page does have an SSL then it is as the information is wrapped with jibberish code so no one can read it or even make sense of it. It is like the info is locked and your server is the only one with the key to unlock it.
TCIP
This is a set of communications protocols to connect hosts on the Internet.
Unix
A computer operating system designed to be used by many people at the same time (it is multi-user). It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet.
Top
Uptime
See availablity.
Virtual Hosting
Virtual hosting is a way to host multiple domains on one computer using a single IP address. Shared web hosting is an application of virtual hosting.
A web server which shares its resources with multiple users. It’s another way of saying that multiple web sites share the resources of one server. If you do not need your own web server (i.e. your own server class computer), you will use a virtual server to host your web site.
WHOIS
The WHOIS (pronounced who-is) is a way for people to tell who owns a domain name, who is the technical/administrative contact on the web page. When you purchase a domain name you are asked to enter in some information like your name (or name of your company) and address, this information is then used as the WHOIS registrant information.
The WHOIS can be private or masked. This is a great service to pay for if you are working out of your home and you do not want people to be able to search your WHOIS and find where you live.
If you would like to do a WHOIS search you can go to DomainTools and type a domain name to be searched. This is also a good search if someone owns a domain you would like to purchase, you will know who to contact to buy the domain.