Web Hosting Glossary

Different types of terms in our comprehensive web hosting glossary on WebHostingSearch.com

Apache - A free open source web server software.

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

ASP.Net - A free technology that allows anyone to create dynamic web sites. It is the successor to ASP.

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

CentOS - A free enterprise class computing platform.

CGI - Common Gateway Interface, information server that is to respond to requests by returning output.

Data Transfer - The stream of bits or bytes which are sent from one location to another - the total amount of outbound traffic from a website.

Dedicated IP - This is when your site is the only one on the internet using a unique IP number. Often said to be a necessity if you have a business oriented website.

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

DNS - Domain Name System, is a system which "translates" number based IP-addresses into text based network addresses. Instead of writing e.g. 145.97.39.155 in your browser when you want to visit this site you write webhostingsearch.com.

Domain name - Identifies a computer and appears as a component of a websites URL.

Domain registrar - Is a company accredited the authority to register Internet domain names.

E-mail - Electronic mail, Messages sent from one person to another via computer.

Firewall - Software protecting the computer from the Internet. Denying or permitting passage, through a computer, based on a set of rules.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol, is one of the earliest and most popular file transfer protocols on the Internet.

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language, 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, a unique address which computers uses to identify and communicate with each other.

Keyword Domain Name - Naming a site after its domain name. This could be considered as spam since such a domain usually has all target keywords embedded in the domain name.

MUA - Mail User Agent, computer program used to manage e-mail.

MySQL - Free open space database software.

PHP - Recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. A computer scripting language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is often compared with ASP.

Private Domain Registration - Keeps spammers and scammers away. Personal information, such as name, home address and e-mail keeps out of the public.

Private Name Server - Private name servers are ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com.

RedHat - Company dedicated to free software.

Ruby on Rails - Application which aims to boost the speed and ease with which database-driven web sites can be produced.

Shared IP - Hundreds of websites sharing one server and one IP address. Makes it easier for web hosts to manage and maintain servers.

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

SMX - Server Macro Expansion, text-embedded macro processing language for producing dynamic content.

Snap Names - Auctions for expired and deleting domain names.

SSL - Secure Sockets Layer encrypts data when it travels from your computer to your hosting server, making e-commerce safe. With a shared SSL you use your web hosting company's SSL certificate - no costs. Private SSL means that you purchase your own SSL certificate.

Subdomain - A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.

TLD - Top-level domain, is the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in this domain www.webhostingsearch.com, the TLD is com.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

Web Hosting - Service allowing individuals and organizations to provide their own website.

Web Mail - E-mail that is accessed via a web browser.

Web Server - A computer program, or computer, that supplies web pages and delivers them on request to the web browsers client computers.

Video Hosting - Web hosting service which allows its visitors to upload videos on a website/forum.