Web Hosting Jargon - A Beginner’s Guide

The internet has spawned hundreds of new terms - downloads, uploads, browsers - the list is endless. Web hosting is no different - experienced users talk glibly of bandwidth, scripting languages, POP3 accounts, databases and more. But what does it all mean?

If you are new to web hosting then you will probably find it take a little while to become familiar with all the jargon needed to understand the details of different web hosting packages. To help you get started, we’ve put together our very own Top 10 of essential web hosting jargon.

1. Domain name - your online identity - http://www.yourdomainname.com - essential and almost always included with hosting.

2. Disk space / storage - How much disk space you can use to store your website’s files - it always sounds a lot, but can soon get eaten up with movie clips and audio files.

3. Data transfer - Every time someone views a page on your website, they transfer all the files for that page to their computer - hosting companies pay for this traffic, so they put a limit on data transfer per month. This limit varies a lot between providers.

4. POP3 / IMAP / Webmail - different ways of accessing your mailboxes. Webmail allows you to access your mail through a web browser and POP3 and IMAP are used with e-mail clients like Outlook.

5. FTP - File Transfer Protocol -the method used to transfer your website’s files to your web host’s servers. Simple to use.

6. MySQL databases - many websites rely on databases to store information - MySQL is the most popular database for websites.

7. Spam Assassin - a great tool used by web hosts to filter most spam out of your e-mail before you get it.

8. Custom error pages - give your visitors a polite message when things don’t work, not just a meaningless error page.

9. PHP, Perl, CGI, SSI - scripting tools to allow you to put extra functionality into your web pages.

10. FrontPage extensions - you need this if your website is built with Microsoft FrontPage.

We’ve only taken a brief look at web hosting-related jargon here, but it should be enough to get you started with web hosting. Good luck!

About the Author

Jason has been in theweb hosting business for 10 years, and has helped thousands of people find their online home. Hisweb hosting reviews are essential when choosing an online host.