Web Hosting Jargon – A Beginner's Guide
Author: Jason

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 the web hosting
(http://www.webhostzoo.com/) business for close to 10 years,
and has helped thousands of people find their online home. His
web hosting reviews
(http://www.webhostzoo.com/reviewarticles/web-hosting-reviews/)
are essential when choosing an online host.