Web Hosting Glossary

Apache

A free open source web server software. Mostly Apache runs on Unix operating system versions like Linux.

ASP

Active Server Pages, is a server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. With ASP you can create interactive web pages and powerful web-based applications that are easy to develop and modify.

Auto Responder

A computer program that automatically answers emails with a previously prepared response.

Bandwidth

The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time.

CGI

Common Gateway Interface. CGI translates data from web servers and displays the data on web pages or in emails.

Control Panel (cPanel)

An online package of tools offered by the better web hosting providers that let you easily manage and edit your websites.

CPU

Central Processing Unit. This part of the computer carries out all instructions of computer programs

Data Transfer

The stream of bits or bytes which are sent from one location to another. It's also called the total amount of outbound traffic from a website.

Dedicated IP

This is when your site is the only one on the internet using this unique IP number. Mostly used for business oriented web sites.

Dedicated Server

A server that only you can use. This is the most expensive way of web hosting but it gives you a much faster loading time for your website.

Disk Space

The amount of hard drive space on the server that is accessible to your websites.

DNS

Domain Name System. This system translates number based IP addresses into text based network addresses.
Instead of writing e.g. 133.88.24.234 in your browser when you want to visit this site you write www.your-webhost.net.

Domain Name

The domain name identifies a computer and appears as a component of a websites URL.

Email Account

An actual email account on the server of your web hosting provider. On each email account you can use a unique email address related to your domain name. (info.mywebsitename.com or support.mywebsitename.com)

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. This is the most popular way to transfer your website from your computer to the server of your web host.

HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language. This is a markup language for web pages. HTML is written in the form of tags and it denotes certain text as headings as links, headings, paragraphs and so on.

IP Address

Internet Protocol address. This IP address is a unique address which computers uses to identify and communicate with each other.

LAMP

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like operating system used by web servers.

MySQL

MySQL is the most popular and free open space database software.

PHP

PHP is a computer scripting language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages.

Shared IP

When hundreds of websites share one server and one IP address.

Sitebuilder

An application made to help you create, manage and promote your website.

SSI

Server Side Includes. This scripting language is used to get information from the server and include it on your website.

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer encrypts data when it travels from your computer to your hosting server, making e-commerce safe.

Sub Domain

When you buy a domain name like: mywebsitename.com you can use several subdomains like: info.mywebsitename.com or contact.mywebsitename.com etc

Unix

The most popular operating systems used by web servers. Unix can be used by many people at the same time.

Uptime

The time websites are really accessible to visitors on the internet.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator.

Web Hosting

Service allowing individuals and organizations to provide their own websites.

Web Mail

E-mail that is accessed via a web browser.

Whois

An internet service allowing to obtain the information about the domain name owner.