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Web Hosting Glossary
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Understanding the terminology of Web Hosting
is important for setting up a good web site.
With new technologies come new vocabularies,
and the language of Web hosting is no exception. There are certain
terms and features of Web hosting that you must understand before
you can select the right web hosting services and plan for your
online business.
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DNS
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| Send
this page to a friend! |
| Clustered |
A group of several servers
that share work and may be able to back each other up if one server
fails is considered clustered. |
| Collocation
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More typically spelt ‘co-location’,
it is a service whereby a company that owns a server houses it in
another company’s data center due to the greater security, stronger
backbone or other technological reasons. |
| 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 (the 'CGI program')
talks to the web server.
Usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a
web server and does something with it, like putting the content
of a form into an e-mail message, or turning the data into a database
query.
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| CGI
scripts |
CGI "scripts" are just scripts
which use CGI. These scripts are usually written in PERL or C++ and
are usually placed in the web directory and called through a form.
CGI scripts link the server and a program running on the system; for
example, CGI scripts are used with interactive forms. |
| CGI-BIN |
The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI
programs are stored. The `bin` part of `cgi-bin` is a shorthand
version of `binary`, because once upon a time, most programs were
referred to as `binaries`. In real life, most programs found in
cgi-bin directories are text files -- scripts that are executed
by binaries located elsewhere on the server. While many hosts will
allow you to store cgi scripts anywhere in your directory, the CGI-BIN
usually affords a higher level of security.
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| Cage |
One measurement for server space in a colocation facility. Generally,
a cage is larger and more secure than a rack.
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Catch-all
Email Account
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An email account in which an email of the form, anything@yourdomain.com,
will go to you. For example, Support@you.com, Webmaster@you.com,
and anything-else@you.com, will all be sent to the account (some
hosts allow you to have these sent to different accounts) set up
for you.
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| Certificate
Authority |
An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections.
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| Control
Panel |
A Web site Control Panel provides a simple
user interface for maintaining and monitoring your Web site. Features
of the Control Panel vary among providers, but most include site administration,
design, statistical reporting, and account maintenance tools. |
| Cold
Fusion |
Cold Fusion is a scripting language used on web pages to interface
with. MS Access, dBASE, FoxPro, and Paradox databases. If you use
Cold Fusion, you will usually need a host which uses an NT operating
system.
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| Contact
Record |
In the case of many registries, contact information for technical,
billing and administrative purposes are maintained in their database.
It is important to keep your contact records updated to ensure that
billing and renewal can proceed without problems.
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Cookie
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The most common meaning of 'Cookie' on the Internet refers to a
piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that
the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the
Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server.
Cookies might contain information such as login or registration
information, online shopping cart information, user preferences,
etc.
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| Database |
When we speak of databases for web hosting we are usually talking
about web sites that need to add, delete, and update large quantities
of information via the web. There are many different types of database
systems available. Some of these include MS Access, MySQL, SQL Server,
and Oracle Databases. If you plan on using ASP more than likely
you will need your hosting company to have a database.
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| Database
server |
A database server is specifically configured to run database software.
Typically, a company will use a database server combined with other
servers to run a powerful web application such as e-commerce.
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| Dedicated
server |
A dedicated server is one that a web hosting company has dedicated
to a single client. In other words, only one client can access that
server and that company’s site is the only one residing on
that server.
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| DNS |
Domain Naming System. The DNS is a distributed, replicated that
allows nameservers to map easily remembered domain names to an IP
number.
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Domain
Name
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The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names
always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the
left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most
general. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but
a given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the
domain names: candidinfo.com, ftp.candidinfo.com, whatever.candidinfo.com
can all refer to the same machine, but each domain name can refer
to no more than one machine.
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| Data
Transfer |
Data Transfer / Hits You have unlimited data transfer (or hits)
on your virtual server. Any outward-bound traffic from your web
site is considered data transfer. For example, each time a html
file, image, or other element on your web page is loaded, data transfer
is generated.
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| Detailed
Web Statistics |
Comprehensive daily graphical reports on your website visitor demographics.
Allows you to monitor how much traffic goes to your Website.
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| Disk
space |
Refers to the amount of server disk storage your account is allocated.
One of the factors in how much you'll pay for Web hosting is how
much space you will need to store your Web pages. Disk space is
usually reported in megabytes (MB). The amount of space you will
need depends on the number of pages in your Web, and more importantly,
on the number and size of your graphic images. Although it is difficult
to determine exactly how much space you will need, keep in mind
that you can get about 100,000 words on a single floppy disk, or
1.44MB.
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Down-time |
The amount of time your Web site is disconnected or inaccessible
via the Internet is known as down-time.
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