Web Hosting Terminology in Layman’s Terms – Simple Guide

Finding the right web hosting can be a challenging task for professional webmasters but it can be especially challenging for beginners looking to host a website for the first time.  As a professional web hosting researcher I spend countless hours researching web hosting companies to determine each host’s strengths and weaknesses. I then take my research and create web hosting reviews for my website.

One day I started thinking about the knowledge that I have obtained and the terminology that I often throw around on my website and I realized that many individuals may not completely understand the web hosting “lingo”.  To help those who may not be a expert in web hosting better understand the products in which they are purchasing I have decided to write this article to explain the sometimes misunderstood web hosting language.

This article is for beginner web hosting users; I will explain each term to the simplest degree possible for a better understanding you may want to complete further research.

Terminology Explained

Bandwidth
Controls the amount of traffic your website can handle 
- Tip:  The higher the bandwidth the better

CGI
A simple script that processes data submitted by a website visitor
- Example:  Most online forums (enter name, address, phone, etc.) use CGI.

CGI-BIN
The place on a web server where CGI scripts are stored

CPANEL
The tool that allows you to control information on your web server

Dedicated Hosting
A more expensive form of web hosting.  Cheaper hosting plans share a web server with others who are hosting websites.  Dedicated hosting allows a user to have his/her own server.  Increased server speeds and less server downtime can be expected with a dedicated hosting plan.

Disk Space
See “Hosting Space” below

Domain Name
A domain name is the actual name of the website that must be entered in a address bar to access a website
-Example:  www.AlreadyHosting.com is my domain name.

Domain Name Forever
Many hosting sites offer a free “domain name” free of cost forever with the purchase of any hosting package.

Firewall
A security feature for your web server
- Analogy: Not Anti-virus but instead Anti-Hacker

 FrontPage Extensions
FrontPage is a popular web site builder program.  A web server with FrontPage extensions support many of FrontPage’s add-on features
- Tip: If you use FrontPage you will want to have FrontPage extensions on your server.

FTP
A way to connect to your web server from your personal computer.

Linux Web Hosting
The base/foundation software of the web hosting server
- Analogy: Linux is to web server as Windows is to personal computers

Hosting Space
The amount of space that you have available on your web server
- Analogy: Hosting Space is to web server as Hard Drive is to personal computer.

IP
The unique address of “data packets” on the internet
- Analogy: IP is to internet as fingerprint is to human

POP
A way to connect web server email accounts to programs such as Outlook and Express Outlook

Reseller Hosting
A reseller hosting plan gives the customer the necessary tools needed to sell his/her own hosting plans for a profit

Shared Hosting
The most affordable and basic way to host a website.  With shared hosting multiple websites are stored on the same web server, sharing resources
- Tip: This is the opposite of dedicated hosting

SiteBuilder
Free software that many web hosting sites offer, this software allows customers to build websites without the need of expensive software.

Stats
Software on a web server that enables you to see visitor information
- Example:  “this article had 1,203 views yesterday”

SQL
SQL is a website language that is used to request data from a database on your web server
- Tip: Microsoft Access is an example of a database

Sub-Domain
- Example:  “www.AlreadyHosting.com” is my domain name “www.hostingreviews.alreadyhosting.com” would be an example of a sub-domain

Virtual Host
Just like shared hosting, multiple websites are hosted on the same server

VPS – Virtual Private Server
Increases privacy and web server performance.
- Tip: The middle grown between a virtual hosting account and a dedicated hosting account

Windows Hosting
Most web hosting servers are either windows based or Linux based
- Analogy: The operating system of a web server

 

This web hosting information was brought to you by the hosting experts at AlreadyHosting.com. If you are looking for additional web hosting terminology explanations I would recommend HostMonster’s Help Center.

Web Hosting In Layman’s Terms

A web hosting company is like the gateway to having your website published on the Internet. Without a hosting company, it would be very costly and nearly impossible to have a website. There are many reasons people want to have a website of their own. Some of these reasons include wanting a business, showcasing and teaching hobbies or wanting to share information with those in the worldwide community.

More and more traditional businesses are realizing that it is important to have a website to complement their business. Many customers turn to the web for information before they will visit a traditional shop. Websites and traditional businesses are a lot alike in the way they are set up. Once you understand the basics of business, then you will understand how web-hosting works.

When you think of a web-hosting company, it is a lot like a real-estate agent. When you want to open a shop in the traditional sense, you see a real-estate agent, find a suitable shop, sign some forms that say you agree to the rental terms and conditions, then you are given the key to your shop. Once you have the key to your shop, you can begin setting up your business just the way you like it.

Web-hosting companies are a lot like that. They require you to sign up and agree to terms and conditions. Once you have signed up, you are provided with your “keys” or login information to access your own piece of cyber space. With the login information, you can then begin to upload or transfer the things you need to make your website viable, whether it is data or pictures.

Another thing that you will need from a web hosting company is an address. Just like a conventional business, you will need a way for your customers to find you. These addresses are known as domain names and always begin with www. The important thing to remember about a domain name is that, if you don’t pay a yearly fee on it, it could get sold to someone else.

Web-hosting companies also provide their customers with email access from their website, a lot like having your own fax machine or message bank in a traditional business setting. Email servers will allow you to communicate and receive information or requests from customers or people interested in getting more information about your website.

For businesses, web-hosting companies can also provide Eftpos facilities or a place for your customers to order goods or services from your website. Customers can pay on the spot and the website owner can have the goods or service delivered to them.

If you were planning to rent a building for your business, you would want to shop around and not take the first place that you saw or go with the first real estate agent you spoke with. Web-hosting companies are the same. There are thousands of different companies out there and each one varies in price and in the services that they provide. The cheapest hosting company is not always best for your business.

Taxonomy of Web Hosting Terms

Almost every one has the knowledge of present internet scenario! How fast it is!!? A bud of web pages nurture to trillions of pages on the Internet, providing several hosting plans to choose from under which comes affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, eCommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting, Co-location Hosting and few others.

Above mentioned are the few web hosting terms which reflects several faces of web hosting. The entire highlighted web hosting plans and terminologies can be categorized in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers, and functionality.

Broad description is given below:

1. Cost:

Web hosting plans are mentioned and divided between affordable web hosting, budget hosting and cheap web hosting. Cost of web hosting is the prime aspect that several small budget site holders are looking for. On displaying the cost of Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan one will come to know that it is less than $5 a month.

2. Programming Languages:

When a user wants to make his/her site dynamic and interactive, he/she should search for hosting plans that support the programming languages that user have command over. Usually applicable languages are PHP, ASP, JSP, PERL etc. Hosting plans assisting such programming languages are called PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting.

3. Operating Systems:

After selecting suitable programming language(s), user still has sovereignty to choose the operating system that can host the concern websites. Moreover, as everybody that ASP is restricted to Microsoft Windows, further programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL; work not only on Windows, but also on UNIX and Linux. Hosting plans assisting particular operating system is termed as Window Hosting, UNIX hosting or rather Linux hosting.

4. Web Servers:

Talking about web servers, Apache is the most widely supported Web server in Web hosting industry. It operates only on Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server. For JSP hosting, Web logic or Web sphere is the main requirement. When ever there is any discussion related to Web servers, the main attraction is server performance. There are several solutions available like Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). Out of these shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and one can host as many sites as he/she likes with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is just $50 a month, and Dedicated Server plan costs from $50 – $100 or more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

5. Functionality:

In the market, one can find several hosting plans which either makes the site creation simple or rather offer assistance for the protection of online transactions. Creating a simple website can be a game of certain hours if the hosting plan selected by user supports assorted templates.

Thus on the hope that this article will definitely serve its users we wish best of luck.

Web Hosting Terms

There are a few hosting terms that you should get to know before looking for a web host. Some of those terms are disk space, bandwidth, domain names, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, MySQL, uptime,Cpanel, and sub domains. The words are listed below.

Byte: a unit of space on a computer. There are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte (KB). There are 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte (MB). There are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte (GB).

Disk Space: the amount of space your web hosting provider gives you to put things on your web page. An example is your web hosting provider giving you 10 MB of disk space. You have three pages, each with three picture. Say each picture is 1MB. You would be using roughly all 10 MB of your disk space (remember that text takes up a small amount of space too).

Bandwidth/Data Transfer: basically the amount of times your page can be viewed. If your web hosting provider gives you 1GB of bandwidth (also known as data transfer), and you have one page that is 50KB in size, then your page could be viewed about 20,000 times. Remember that if you have flash or videos on your page it would take up much more bandwidth.

Shared Hosting: a type of hosting where a server is shared by many people. Is cheaper than dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting, but it is slower than if you have your own server.

Dedicated Hosting: is a type of hosting where you have your own server. Is much more expensive than shared hosting, but you usually have faster speeds and are less likely to have your server go down.

Cpanel: a well recognised control panel. Cpanel is one of the best control panels around because of it’s easy navigation and amount of features.

Domain Names: are a web sites adress. For example Google’s adress is www.google.com. Domain names cost money, but some web hosting providers will give you a domain name for free, while others will make you sign up for one yourself.

Sub-Domains: are domains that are part of another domain. An example is my site. My site is called Cheap Web Hosting Guide, but I am part of Blogger.com. So my site’s web address is www.cheapwebhostingguide.blogspot.com

MySQL Database: is a database that allows you to install scripts into your site. Many web hosting providors will include self installing scripts for you to add. An example is a forum. Many, but not all, forums are self installed scripts that are later customised by the user.

Uptime: is percent of time the web hosting providers servers are up. An example is a web hosting company that reports 99.9% uptime. This means that their servers are up 99.9% of the time, or 23.976 hours a day.