What you need to know - Web Hosting Terminology.

Data Transfer: Same as bandwidth.

Dedicated IP Address: In traditional shared hosting, each domain shares the IP address of the server that domain is stored on. A dedicated IP address is a unique set of identifying numbers for a web site.

Disk/Server/HD Space: The amount of space provided by a web host for the storage of web pages, files and email accounts. Usually measured in Megabytes or Gigabytes.

Domain Alias: A domain that points to the same website as another. For instance, you could have domain.com with domain.net as an alias to domain.com - that way, people accessing domain.net would see the same contact as those viewing domain.com.

Domain Name: A name that identifies a web site. Domain Names always have 2 or more components, separated by dots. While site names may share a common component, no two sites on the Internet may have the same primary nameandtail extension.

EPP Code or Authorization Key: A domain authorization code (also referred to as an Auth Code or an EPP Code) provides an extra level of security for the domain name registration. This code is unique to each domain name and is assigned by the registrar at the time of registration.

Domain Name System (DNS): A database that is used to translate domain names into Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.

E-Mail Alias: An email forwarding account that allows your to direct email to an alias to another email account while also allowing you to send email under the alias name.

FP (Frontpage) Extensions: FrontPage offers many advanced features, but these features will not function correctly unless the server where your site is stored has the necessary software, or extensions, installed.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. A protocol for exchanging files with a host computer.

FreeBSD: An Open Source variant of the BSD operating system. BSD is a variation the UNIX operating system.

HTML: abbreviation for"HyperText Mark-up Language". The text-based language (which is basically a structure of tags looking like " Text ") used to construct web pages and interpreted by web browsers

HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol): The most common protocol used on the web for transferring hypertext files.

Internet Protocol (IP) Numbers (IP addresses): A unique set of numbers used to specify systems, whether they be a home computer, a wap enable cell phone or an Internet server.

Mail spooler: a special file on server where all your incoming mail is stored in plain text format

MySQL: MySQL is the world's most popular database server technology. It is robust and flexible and owes it's popularity to the Open Source movement; developers who create base applications and make them, and the source code, available to all at no cost.

Name Server: A computer designed to resolve domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.

Node: Any computer connected to a network

Open Source: Any application code that has been made available to developers to view and modify freely. Examples of Open Source applications are MySQL and PHP

Path: The route through a file system to a particular file.

PERL (Practical Extraction and Report Language): A programming language used to creative interactive applications

PHP: A server-side scripting language made popular by the Open Source community.

Primary Server: The dominant name server. This server is queried first before others.

POP: Post Office Protocol, a protocol for fetching mail from a mailserver

Raw Log Files: A simple text file that contains all the requests made to a site and the origin of that request; every web page, image, script etc. request is recorded, along with the IP address of the person/system that requested it. Each requested element is entered on a single line. Log files are invaluable tools for determining traffic and also for tracking problems and security breaches.

Redundant connections: Indicates that a hosting service has more than one main connection to the Internet, ensuring continued service should any single connection fail.

Registrant: Person or company that registers a specific domain name and holds the rights over that name for the registration period.

Script: A compilation of commands that can be automatically executed.

Secondary Server: The name server that acts as a backup for the primary name server in cases of outages or overloading.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol): The protocol used to send email.

SSI (Server Side Includes): Commands that can be embedded in web pages which are then processed by the web server the page is requested. The most common usage of SSI is the inclusion of common menus, headers and footer elements for a page. Using SSI, when the page containing the common element is updated, then all the pages containing the SSI command that calls for that element will display the updated version.

SSL: Secure Sockets Layer. It's a protocol that allows for secure and encrypted transmissions of data form. SSL ensures that data is sent only to the server you intended to send it to, and without it being intercepted and changed along the path. SSL is most commonly used in payment transactions and for securing pages where sensitive data is required. A secure page is usually indicated by a https:// in the address and also by a closed lock on Internet Explorer's status bar.

Subdomain: A way of dividing a primary domain into specific sections and creating separate sites. For example:

yourdomain.com - primary

something.yourdomain.com - subdomain

T-1: A connection capable of carrying data at 1.5 megabytes per second.

T-3: A connection capable of carrying data at over 5 megabytes per-second.

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): The protocol used to connect computers on the Internet.

Telnet: A terminal protocol that runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol that allows for users to log into other computers via a command line interface. SSH is a secure version of Telnet.

UNIX is an operating system. The job of an operating system is to co-ordinate the various components of a computer -- the processor, the memory, disk drives, keyboards,network equipment monitors, etc. to perform tasks in the proper way - it is the master controller.

UNIX was created in the late 1960s, in an effort to provide a secure multiuser, multitasking system for use by programmers. It is the most common operating system for Internet servers and many different flavors and variations of the operating system have been developed over the years.

We run FreeBSD; derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The full unique address of any site/file on the the World Wide Web (WWW). Think of it as a unique address for each of your files in your web site. A URL looks like this: http://"yourdomainname"

Whois: The command/application to access searchable databases of domain names maintained by domain registrars. These databases contain information on the registrants and networks associated with a particular name.