Hosting terminology

Web hosting jargon explained

The web hosting world is full of technical terms that can seem confusing at first. The following A-Z list of the most common expressions should help shed some light on this matter:

Apache

Apache is a very popular open-source web server software. It handles everything from the moment someone connects to a website to sending the requested page.

ASP

ASP (Active Server Page) is a server-side scripting language for Windows similar to PHP. It's from Microsoft so it's not free.

Backbone

Backbones are the main connections of the internet. They are made up of large interconnected data routes and carry data across countries and even continents. ISPs are typical clients of backbone operators.

Backup

Your server hard drive might get toasted or a hacker might attack your site and delete all your files. To prevent total loss of your data due to such catastrophic events you can make periodic backups of all your website files. Either manually by downloading all files and database dumps or through an automated system provided by your web host.

Bandwidth

The amount of data that is downloaded by your visitors from your web server (in MB, GB or even TB for big sites). The more bandwidth you use the more you have to pay for web hosting. Some web hosts even close down sites once a certain monthly limit is reached, so be careful and plan ahead. Large files such as pictures and videos take up lots of bandwidth.

BBS

A BBS (Bulleting Board System) is the software that powers your typical online discussion forum where you can post threads and replies. Some popular ones are vBulletin, phpBB and IPB.

CGI

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a protocol that allows web pages to execute programs on a web server. These programs can be written in a number of languages such as PERL and are usually stored in the /cgi folder of the server. Typical applications are counters, guest books, processing of submitted forms, etc.

Disk space

The amount of space you're allowed to use for your website such as html files, pictures, videos and so on. More often than not websites only need very little space unless you have a picture or video related site.

DNS

The Domain Name System is responsible for translating human-readable domain names into their corresponding IP adress. See the beginner DNS guide for more information.

Domain name

A domain name is the unique internet address (the one you type into your browser) of a website. For more information have a look at the beginner guide to domain names.

Domain transfer

Domain names can be transferred from one domain registrar to another. This is useful if you're selling or buying existing domain names. Newly registered or recently transfered domain names are typically locked for 60 days before being transferable again.

E-commerce

Online business that usually involves selling products through an online store with a shopping cart system. Amazon.com is a popular example.

Forwarding

Suppose you have a website www.mysite.com but now you want to change it to your new domain www.mynewsite.com. With the help of forwarding you can automatically redirect all visitors of www.mysite.com to www.mynewsite.com. This is something you have to configure in your web server software (e.g. Apache).

FTP

Stands for File Transfer Protocol. With a FTP program you can connect to your server with a user name and password to upload and download files. FTP connections are not encrypted.

IMAP

IMAP (Instant Message Access Protocol) allows email clients to access emails stored on a server without downloading and erasing them (unlike POP3). The emails always stay on the server. This is very useful if you need multiple people to have access to the same email account.

ISP

An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a company which provides internet access to people. Often times they also offer additional services like email, web hosting and so on.

Linux

Linux (invented by Linus Torvalds) is a free open-source operating system coming in many different distributions (Debian, SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, ...). It is widely used in networking environments such as servers and is considered far more stable and reliable than its Windows counterpart. It can also be used as a graphical desktop operating system just like Windows. See Ubuntu.

MySQL

MySQL is one of the most used open-source (free of charge) relational databases in the world. It let's you store, organize and read data in a very efficient and fast manner.

Parking

Parking is when you buy a domain name but don't immediately use it for a website. The domain is usually parked at your domain registrar showing their parking page when you visit the domain.

PHP

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a free and widely used server-side scripting language. It is very similar to C++ and can be included directly into HTML pages (usually with a .php ending) by using the <?php ... ?> tags. It's very often used in combination with MySQL to process, store and retrieve data.

POP3

POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is a protocol for downloading emails from a mail server to your mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird, ...). Downloaded emails are erased from the server.

SMTP

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the reverse of POP3 and used for sending emails.

SQL

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a database language used by many databases such as MySQL and Oracle. Whenever you want your database to do something you have to tell it in SQL.

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer is a security standard used to create an encrypted connection between the user's browser and the website they are communicating with. It's mostly used for sending sensitive data such as credit card information or passwords. Web server certificates are required in order to create a secure SSL connection.

Traffic

The amount of visitors a website is getting. Typically this is measured in unique visitors (IPs) per month. High-traffic sites like Google, Yahoo or Youtube get millions of visitors every day.

Uptime

Uptime is how often your web server is online and accessible. Ideally your hosting plan should have an uptime of 100% so that visitors can reach your sites at any given time. Downtimes happen now and then, though. Most web hosts offer 99.9% uptime which is more of a marketing gag. Good hosts sometimes have some sort of 3rd party monitoring to proof their high uptime reliability.

Web server certificates

These are digital certificates installed on the server that enable a website to establish a secure SSL connection with a client's browser.

Web space

See disk space.