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Beginner's Web Hosting Glossary ASP - Active Server Pages ASP is a programming language that is used for both very simple, small tasks and for very large complex applications on web servers that are running under Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server). Companies run affiliate programs to generate leads and sales from other websites, companies or individuals. They pay a commission for products sold through the links on their affiliate's websites or sales made due to the affiliates referrals from email or word of mouth. As an example, if a site owner signs up for Amazon.com's affiliate program, he will receive ad banners or links from Amazon.com that he can place anywhere on his site. Then, if a visitor clicks on the Amazon.com banner or a link on his site and buys something, he will receive a commission. Aliases are used in email systems to assign additional names to email accounts. They can also be used to redirect mail from one email account to another email account. A special form of alias is the "catch-all" which receives names from email names that have not been set up on an email account. A powerful and flexible web server application that can be configured and extended with many additional features. Apache is recommended for web servers that are running under Linux. An auto responder is set up with an email account to send an automatic reply or series of messages to anyone who sends a message to the autoresponder's email address. The Internet system consists of all of the telephone, cable, satellite, and microwave communication lines that are used to transfer data from one location to another. The backbones are the high-volume cables that all the smaller lines and cables eventually hook up to. They can transfer immense amounts of information at very high speeds. They are owned and maintained by large companies like MCI and Sprint. If you think of the Internet system as road system, the backbones are the freeways. Bandwidth is a term used to describe the volume of data that can pass through a communications line or cable (such as an Internet connection) within a given period of time. Bandwidth is usually measured monthly. An Internet slang word for "web log". A log is simply an ongoing record, like a daily diary or or journal. A blog is a log that has been published on the World Wide Web. It's usually written by a single author, who is referred to as a "blogger". An author that publishes their works online through a blog. It is also the name of Google.com's blogging website. A browser is a software program that allows access to the Internet, usually the World Wide Web. There are many web browsers out there to choose from. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are two of the most popular. A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made. A single keystroke is equal to a single byte of information. A full page of English text is around 2,000 bytes. CGI -- (Common Gateway Interface) A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software talks to the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. A client is a computer program for accessing and processing data that is stored on another computer. A person who attempts to break into a network or computer system, often with the intent to steal material or perform malicious destruction of files--or just to show it can be done. Crackers try to exploit weaknesses in system security or in some cases, the weaknesses of its users who can be tricked into revealing passwords. A database is an electronic filing system, that stores information in an organized fashion so the data can be quickly stored, deleted, accessed, searched, and viewed. Dedicated hosting is a service that Web hosting companies provide to customers who need their own computer because they store a lot of data, have a large amount of traffic or because they do not want to share disk-space with other websites.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. Groups of files on a computer or entire groups of computers are assigned a unique numeric address so they can be found on the Internet. The numeric address is called the "IP address". Each numeric address can have one or more unique names assigned to it. The names are referred to as domain names. As an example, the numeric address for Yahoo is 66.94.234.13. The domain names assigned to that number are yahoo.com, yahoo.org, yahoo.net and so on. Whether you type in the numeric address, or one of the three domain names, you will end up on Yahoo's website. Very often, individuals or companies buy domain names before they are ready to use them. A simple web page describing the future content or advertising the new owners of the website is then "parked" on the address in order to generate interest before the website actually goes online. Simply put, when you download data or programs you are transferring data from a server or host computer to your own computer. It is the opposite of upload. Literally means "electronic commerce". It simply means doing business online. The term e-commerce is usually used to refer to the ability to sell products online through an automated electronic shopping cart with online payment processing. Literally means "electronic mail" and is a system for sending and receiving messages over the Internet. Forwarding accounts are set up to send email for one email account to another email account as soon as they come in. A software program developed by Microsoft for web site creation and management. It gives you everything you need to create and manage a Web site. FrontPage extensions are are a special type of software application that allows Front Page users to publish directly to their Web server from within the Front Page software program. FTP -- (File Transfer Protocol) A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites are called "anonymous ftp servers". FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface. A gigabyte is a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 megabytes. One Gigabyte (Gb) is equal to about one billion bytes. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is a special computer language used by web browsers to "markup" the file, giving the browser instructions as to where to place text and images, what colors and fonts to use and what interactive functions will be available on a web page displayed in the browser window. HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the method by which World Wide Web HTML files are transmitted over the Internet. Generally, any text that contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed. IIS - Internet Information Server Internet Information Services (IIS) is a Web server application for all versions of Windows Server. The Internet is the massive, constantly growing and changing system of computers that have been set up to connect to one another and transmit digital information through a world wide system of phone lines, cable lines, fiber optic lines, satellite and microwave communications systems. IP Address stands for Internet Protocol Address. This is a unique numeric address that is used on the Internet to identify the location of a particular computer or file location on a particular computer. Most shared hosting plans share an IP address unless they specifically offer unique IP address with a hosting plan. It is okay to share an IP address, but you will need a unique IP address if you plan on installing a unique secure server certificate (see SSL) or your own mail server. ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. Internet Service Providers offer software and equipment that makes it possible to connect to the Internet. A word searched for in a search command. Keywords are searched in any order. Use spaces to separate keywords in simple keyword searching. To search keywords exactly as keyed (in the same order). An operating system that is in wide use on web servers throughout the Internet. There are many different versions of Linux for almost every available type of computer hardware. The underylying programming code of Linux is open and available for anyone to view and change as long as the changes are made available to the public. This has resulted in thousands of people working on updating, upgrading and adding to Linux.. With managed hosting, you lease a dedicated server and pay additional fees for maintenance services from the hosting company. With managed hosting, you don't have to upgrade, back up or manage your dedicated server, the hosting company takes care of all that for you. A megabyte is a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,048,576 bytes of information. A single keystroke is equal to a single byte of information. MX stands for Mail Exchange. An MX record is an entry for a domain that identifies the mail server that is to be used for handling e-mails for that domain name. With some hosting services, you can make an entry for additional mail servers. This is used to set up email backup mail servers or the entry can be changed to allow email to be processed through another email system entirely. The name of one of several database applications that run under Linux. Any time you connect 2 or more computers together so that they can share their data or their applications, you have a computer network. Connect 2 or more networks together and you have an internet. An operating system is a software application that is installed on a computer to provide it with the basic operational software necessary for information to be stored and retrieved from a hard drive on a computer and to utilize the processing capabilities of the computer. It sits between the software applications people use and the physical equipment that makes up the computer and translates instructions back and forth. It literally "operates" the computer and tells it what to do and when. The method used to move data around on the Internet. In packet switching, all the data coming out of a computer is broken up into chunks called packets. Each packet has the address of where it came from and where it is going. This enables chunks of data from many different sources to travel on the same lines, and be sorted and directed along different routes by special computers called routers along the way. This way many people can use the same lines at the same time. Perl -- (Practical Extraction and Report Language) Perl is a programming language that is widely used for both very simple, small tasks and for very large complex applications. A form of public-key encryption used to keep your email (and other stuff) from prying eyes. PHP -- (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) PHP is a programming language used almost exclusively for creating software that is part of a web site. The PHP language is designed to be intermingled with the HTML that is used to create web pages. Unlike HTML, the PHP code is read and processed by the web server software (HTML is read and processed by the web browser software.) The PHP ini (Initialization) file contains settings for PHP. On most shared hosting plans, you can't access and change this file. If you are going use programs that need to open files remotely, or for which you need to change the default size for the maximum file upload size or change the register global setting then you need to check if you can access the PHP INI file. This is an option for PHP programming which automates assigning values in a PHP application. Many pre-written PHP scripts you can buy use this option. If they do, you either have to be able to turn this option on or you have to re-write the script so it will run without it. Many hosting companies have turned this option off because of numerous abuses.
Ping is a test you can do to a server (or any computer on a network or the internet). It will send some packets (by default 32 bytes of data) to that computer and will tell you how long it took them to get there (in milliseconds) and if they all got there, or how many were lost. It isn't really a valid test for how fast a site is, for the speeds will always vary, but if it always takes a long time to ping a site, that's a problem. A (usually small) piece of software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are plug-ins for the Netscape® browser and web server. Adobe Photoshop® also uses plug-ins. POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is one of several standard methods for sending, receiving and storing email. Your Internet Service Provider runs specialized software that establishes POP3 email accounts and manages all the incoming and outgoing email for every POP3 account that has been set up on it. Each POP3 account that is set up is given a certain amount of storage space to store incoming emails. A term used to describe a web site that is designed to be the first place people visit when using the Web. A typical "Portal Site" has an index of web sites, and a search engine, or both. They may also offer email and other services to entice people to use that site as their first "point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web. You may not realize it but computers speak a foreign language. It's entirely made of "on" or "off" and is very difficult for people to work with. The computer couldn't care less, it processes its own language at lightning speeds. Programming languages were devised to make it possible for people to give computers instructions. You type up the instruction in the programming language and it translates it in to computer language. Everything that happens on a computer is the result of instructions written for the computer by computer programmers. There are many different computer languages, and some languages are really just refinements of a lower-level language. On the Internet "protocol" usually refers to a set of rules that define an exact format for communication between computerized systems. For example the HTTP protocol defines the format for communication between web browsers and web servers. An audio format used on the web. Real Audio can be used to provide "streaming" audio where the audio is played as it is being downloaded. Redundancy refers to backbone support. It usually means that the web hosting company has 2 or more lines or connections that are from different backbone providers. As an example, they may have one from MCI and another from Sprint. That way, if something happens to the MCI line then everything auto-switches to the Sprint line. A special-purpose computer (or software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more Packet-Switched networks. Routers spend all their time looking at the source and destination addresses of the packets passing through them and deciding which route to send them on. RSS -- (Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication) A commonly used protocol for syndication and sharing of content, originally developed to facilitate the syndication of news articles, now widely used to share the contents of blogs. A script is a type of programming language that can be used to fetch and display Web pages. There are may kinds and uses of scripts on the Web. They can be used to create all or part of a page, and communicate with searchable databases. Forms (boxes) and many interactive links, which respond differently depending on what you enter, all require some kind of script language. When you find a question mark (?) in the URL of a page, some kind of script command was used in generating and/or delivering that page. A server is a computer that stores data in files or databases and has special software installed on it that can respond to requests for its data, locate the data being requested and "serve" it to the requesting computer. Servers can also receive data from other computers and store the data in its file system in the location specified by the sender. Shared hosting refers to the practice of sharing disk space on a web server among many different customers and websites. All of the websites on a particular server have access to the software and applications installed on that computer and share the Internet connection and bandwidth that is available. SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol A common set of rules that allow a program sending and a program receiving email to interact with each other. The SMTP server is the outgoing mail server. A socket is one endpoint of a two-way communication link between two programs running on a network. A simple explanation is that the socket identifies the software application to which the data is being sent. There are always two sockets - one at the sending point, the other at the receiving point. A simplified way to think of sockets is to compare them to the two ends of a power cord for a computer. One end plugs into the wall, the other into the computer, and the power runs through the line between the two. You can't put the wall plug in the computer - it won't fit and you can't put the computer plug end in the wall socket. Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as "crawlers" or "knowledge-bots" or "knowbots" that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep the search engine database of web pages up to date. They obtain new pages, update known pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into their "home" database. A value or file that a server can include in an HTML file, before it sends the file to the browser. This allows information like current time, last modified dates, and other bits of constantly changing information to be displayed every time the web page is accessed. You can also make up a block of text that you want to show on a group of web pages, put it in a separate file and use a server side include to add it to whatever web pages you want to show it on. A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. It is used to send private information from one computer to another so it cannot be intercepted and stolen. As an example, when payments are made online, SSL is used to hide and protect the credit card information. You can tell if SSL is being used by looking at the URL - instead of http:// at the beginning of the URL, you will see https:// - the "s" at the end shows that SSL has been enabled and you are now using a secure connection. Storage on a server is simply the disk space available to hold files. A lower-level component of a domain name. For example, mail.mycompany.com and support.mycompany.com are subdomains of mycompany.com. They are used to make simplified website addresses for files in a particular domain. As an example, you can have a website address to a particular group of files such as: http://www.mycompany.com/graphics/buttons/. You could assign a subdomain to that address and call it buttons.mycompany.com, which is a lot shorter and easier to remember. TCP/IP stands for Transmissions Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. TCP is the host to host connection used by computers to manage transmissions between computers on a network and IP manages finding the destination computer so the individual packets arrive at the right computer. This is a method of accessing a web server through direct access. You basically have complete control of the remote computer. You can execute files, upload, download and do all kinds of things. Most hosting companies will not enable Telnet on shared hosting plans because of the security risk. TLD stands for Top Level Domain and refers to the last part of an Internet domain name, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the TLD is com There are many TLDs, many are reserved for use only if you are in a particular country, some for business, some only for government. Here's a list of all of them: List of TLDs Traffic refers to the number of people who visit a website. Transfer rate and bandwidth is essentially the same thing, referring to the volume of data that can flow through a communications line, cable or channel over a given period of time. This is the computer term for sending files from one computer to another computer through the Internet. It is the opposite of download. The time during which a system is working without failure. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is an Internet address which is set up according to very specific naming standards for the Internet. A URL on the world wide web always starts with HTTP://, followed by www. followed by the domain name, i.e. myname.com. Example: http://www.yahoo.com. A web server is a computer that stores websites and their related files for viewing on the Internet. It has special software installed on it that allows people to access the files over the Internet. It's really just another word for disk space, but is used when you refer to disk space on a web hosting service's computer. See WWW. WWW stands for World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is the collection of computers that store and serve files that conform to the the HTTP protocol and can be accessed and viewed by any web browser connected to the Internet.
Zend Guard, formerly known as Zend Encoder, protects commercial PHP 4 and PHP 5 applications from being stolen,
unauthorized customization, unlicensed use and redistribution. Most commercial applications come with a copy of it so
you can use their script, but sometimes you are required to have it available on your hosting service.
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