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Commonly Used Web Hosting Terms
Adult Site - Any website that contains adult content.
Auto Responder - An automated program that acknowledges receipt of an e-mail message, and then sends back a previously prepared email to the sender, letting them know it was received. Main uses of this are when you may be on vacation or out of the office.
Backbone - A high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. The term is relative as a backbone in a small network will likely be much smaller than many non-backbone lines in a large network. In general, the better the backbone of the hosting company, the better the availability of the web sites that run on their computers.
Browser - The software that displays the HTML code it receives from the server. A home user would use something such as Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer to browse the internet. All browsers work slightly different and one may not display the pages correctly if the code was developed exclusively for another browser. Our website is specifically made for viewing in Mozilla Firefox.
CGI - is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server.
cPanel/Control Panel - An online package of tools permitting easy site management and editing. By having your own control panel, you can maintain basic and extended information about your site, mail boxes, etc.
Data Transfer - The term data transfer refers to the amount of digital information that moves from one computer to a device or another computer within a given period of time. For instance, if you have a monthly data transfer of 100mb and you host a 5mb spreadsheet, you could only share that spreadsheet with 20 of your colleagues.
Disk Space - The amount of data you can store, almost the same thing as your hard drive on your computer.
Domain Name - An internet web site address. e.g. weblyte.com
Extension - This word has multiple meanings, as in file extensions this can be .html .php .cgi and others.
Firewall - Software in place to defend a network from inside and outside attacks.
FTP - File Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol defining how to download and upload files between a client and an FTP server. Popular client FTP programs are CuteFTP and WS_FTP. Most major browser also have FTP capability.
Home Page - Main page that is shown on a website, usually a file named index that can end in an extension.
Host - A networked computer dedicated to providing a certain kind of service. Usually refers to a computer that stores the website files and has a web server running on it.
HTML - (Hypertext Markup Language). It is the language in which web pages are written. It allows the images to be combined with text and offers wide range of formatting capabilities. One of the most important features of HTML is hypertext, that allows web pages to be liked one to each other.
HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The main protocol used to transfer and receive data over the World Wide Web. The latest version of HTTP is 1.1. Basic HTTP transaction involves a WWW browser connecting to a server, browser sending a request to the server specifying its capabilities and which document is requested, server responding with the required data, and closing of the connection.
Hyperlink - A text or image object that can take you to another web page. By clicking on a hyperlink the user's browser (internet explorer/firefox) is redirected to another page. The word hyperlink is often shortened to "link". Example: I'm a hyperlink.
IP Address - A unique number used to specify hosts and networks. Internet Protocol (IP) numbers are used for identifying machines that are connected to the Internet. They are sometimes called a dotted quad and are unique numbers consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, They would look something like this 1.22.33.444. Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number - if a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet.
MB (MegaByte) - 1MB = 1024 KB (KiloBytes) or 1,048,576 bytes.
Network - A collection of servers or computers connected online.
Perl - An open source CGI scripting programming language. Written in 1987. Still one of the most popular web programming languages mostly due to its powerful text-manipulation facilities. A huge number of Perl scripts are available for download.
PHP - PHP is another scripting language. Like ASP, 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.
Pre-Installed Forums - Basically the same thing that Fantastico does, Invision Power Board and phpbb are easily installable from your cPanel.
Pre-Installed Scripts - Just like the forums above, but these web applications range from blogs to customer support tools.
PhpMyAdmin - phpMyAdmin is a PHP front-end for manipulating MySQL database information. This program has been used for many years and is a favorite in the web developer community. This is a browser-based alternative to programs which you may have already used in the past like MySQL Front, MySQL Maestro and Navicat. With our web hosting solution you no longer need to install any of these programs on your local machine or on the web. We install it for you and it is available the second that you have access to your new control panel.
POP (Post Office Protocol) - This 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 protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). There are two versions of POP. The first, called POP2, became a standard in the mid-80's and requires SMTP to send messages. The newer version, POP3, can be used with or without SMTP. The newest and most widely used version of POP email is POP3 email. You will see the term POP3 in most of the web hosting plans available today.
SSH (Secure Shell Access) - More of a tech savvy tool. Permits you to edit your files online in real-time, rather than making changes to your site offline and then uploading the changes.
Uptime - Is the amount of time within a 24 hour period a network system is active or available for servicing requests. For example, if a hosting company says it is available 99.9% of the time, they are claiming that your web site will up all the time except for about 8 seconds each day. Over the course of a year, in this example, the hosting company is claiming that your site will only be unavailable (not able to be viewed online) for 48 hours.
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