Web Hosting Terminologies 101

Finding the right web hosting company can be a challenging task, but it can be especially challenging for beginners looking to host a website for the first time.

Today I started thinking about the the terminology that I often throw around in meetings 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 have a better understanding of the products in which they are purchasing I have decided to write an article explaining the sometimes misunderstood web hosting language.

This article is written for beginners; I will explain each term to the simplest degree possible for an easy understanding you may can comment below.

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 forms (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.inodecloud.com is our domain name.

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 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:  “inodecloud.com 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.inodecloud.com” is my domain name & “signup.inodecloud.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