Terminology A-Z
A
Ad Banner
ad banner a.k.a. banner ad, online ad An online advertisement on a Web page, it links to another Web site or buffer page or landing page.
Alias
Aliases can be used to identify different e-mail accounts and can redirect mail to other POP3 accounts or to another folder within the same address. A catch-all alias can be used to process e-mail from unknown senders, and is often known as a “junk-mail” sorter.
Alt Tag
An HTML tag that provides alternative text when Web pages are displayed without images. This text is helpful for the visually impaired or those who choose not to download images on Web pages in order to increase their surfing speed. With some browsers, this text appears when you put your mouse over an image and leave it there. It is not necessary for Web designers to put any text there, but if they include terms specific to the Web site, some of the search engines may list the site higher in their results.
Auto responder
Auto responders are not true email accounts, but they do have an e-mail address and reply to anyone who sends them an e-mail. This is a handy tool if you want to send out the same information to anyone who asks for it. The pre-formatted e-mail is automatically sent as a reply, guaranteeing that every response is identical.
B
Back End
The portion of a program that accomplishes the processing tasks the program is designed to perform. In a LAN with client/server architecture, the back end app may be stored on the file server while the front end programs handle the user interface on each workstation.
Backwards Compatible
A term used to describe a program's ability to read a file created in an earlier version of it.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is a term used to describe the amount of data that can pass through a communications channel (such as an Internet connection) in a given period of time. Bandwidth is often measured monthly
Browser
A browser is a program that allows access to the web visually by allowing requests from special files known as HyperText Markup Language, The language of web sites. There are many web browsers out there to choose from. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer program is one of the most popular.
B2B
Business-to-Business An acronym that describes business-to-business relationships or applications. Many Web sites focus on B2B solutions that cater to a vertical market. These sites are for businesses, and only other businesses can access them or make purchases.
C
CGI
Common Gateway Interface A standard script for running programs on a server from a Web page. CGI programs (also called scripts) can be run independently and were designed to be external so they can run under various (possibly different) servers interchangeably. The most common CGI scripts found on the Web are programs that process the information a user enters on a form.
Client
A client is a computer program that can download files for editing, run applications, or request application based services from a file server. An FTP client is a common software package used for uploading and maintaining web sites.
Client/Server
A relationship in which one computer program (the client) requests information from another computer program (the server), whereby the server responds in fulfilling the request. In terms of "client/server architecture," it is the design model for applications running on a network. The bulk of the back end processing, such as performing a physical search of a database, takes place on a server. The front end processing, which involves communicating with the user, is handled by smaller programs distributed to client workstations.
CSS
cascading style sheets (CSS) A format used to separate style from structure on Web pages, it is a feature of HTML that gives both Web developers and users more control over how Web pages are displayed. With CSS, designers create style sheets that define how different elements, such as headers and links, will appear. These style sheets can then be applied to any page or all pages on a particular Web site, which makes coding much easier.
D
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated Hosting is a service that Web hosting companies provide to their customers whose web sites. generate a lot of traffic. Essentially, and entire server is used for a single customer, ensuring that all of the server’s resources are used to that customer’s needs. This is important for companies that do business online, as heavy traffic tends to eat up bandwidth and make sluggish web sites.
DNS
DNS stands for “Domain Name System”, and it is a way for institutions differentiate themselves from each other. The most famous domain is the “dot com” (.com) domain, which denotes a commercial web site. Other domains include the name of the host country (.us, .ca)
Domain Parking
Domain Parking refers to when individuals or companies buy up domain names before they are ready to use them. A simple web page describing the future content or advertising the new owners of the web site. is then “parked” on the address in order to generate interest before the website actually goes online.
Download
Simply put, when you download data or programs you are transferring data from a server or host computer to your own computer.
E
e-commerce
Conducting business online. Selling goods, in the traditional sense, is possible to do electronically because of certain software programs that run the main functions of an e-commerce Web site, including product display, online ordering, and inventory management.
e-mail
Created by Roy Tomlinson for ARPANET in 1971, e-mail is a system for sending and receiving messages electronically over a computer network. E-mail has revolutionized personal communications in the 21st century.
e-mail forwarding
The process of redirecting your incoming mail to a different mailbox. For example, if you have a number of e-mail addresses, you can have them forwarded to a single mailbox. This makes it easier to retrieve and manage your messages.
Encryption
The process of protecting information as it moves from one computer to another. Passing through a complex mathematical process (an encryption algorithm), the information is encoded before it is sent and decoded with a secret key when it is received. Without this key, the information is undecipherable. Computers use a binary number, usually 40- to 128-bits in length, as the key. The larger the key, the more difficult it is to break the encryption and decipher the message in transit.
F
Forwarding
Account Forwarding accounts are special e-mail accounts that allow e-mail to be redirected to another account as soon as they come in. This can be helpful when you have several accounts running at once and would like to consolidate your email to a single address.
FTP
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is a communications protocol that governs the transfer of files from one computer to another over a network.
G
Gigabyte
A gigabyte is a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 megabytes. One Gigabyte (Gb) is equal to about one billion bytes (230 bytes).
Gateway
A system for exchanging information across networks that are incompatible and use different protocols. Basically, a gateway is a combination of hardware and software that connects two different types of networks so that information can be exchanged.
H
HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is a special computer language used to structure the text and multimedia documents of a website. It also is used to create hypertext links between electronic documents. HTML was invented in 1991 by Tim Berner-Lee, and makes use of specifications made by URLs (Uniform Resource Locators).
HTTP
HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. HTTP is mostly used to request and transmit web pages and web page components over the Internet or other computer networks.
I
Internet
The Internet is an interconnected system of networks that connects computers around the world. The Internet was developed by many different minds, but most agree that the real birth of the modern Internet was the ARPANET program in the 1960’s. The Internet connects networks together using the TCP/IP protocol.
IP Address
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) Often called a dotted quad, it is a a unique number consisting of 4 or 6 parts (octets) separated by periods (or dots), and which designates a hexadecimal address used to identify server locations on the world wide web. It may appear like this: 65.33.42.110 in its most common form, but could also be expressed hex decimally. Note that IPv4 addresses have four octets, but the soon-to-be-in-use IPv6 IP addresses will have six octets, and will appear as follows: 33.110.42.66.240.155.
In general, each domain name must resolve to an IP address registered to the web server which is hosting the domain. More commonly explained, an IP address is a number analogous to a street address on the Web. When the internet was first created in the 1960's as part of the Department of Defense, IP addressing provided a means to identify unique locations on the internet, much as street addresses are unique and identify houses and buildings in a given city.
IP addresses may be dedicated, in which case they are hard-assigned to a given computer or internet connection, so that other computers may reach a given computer at an IP address simply by using the IP address and without a (canonical) domain name. Each web server has a dedicated IP address or addresses, and individual domain names can have dedicated IP addresses.
ISP
ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. An ISP is an organization which creates connections from its customers to the internet, thus allowing the customer to access the internet. ISP's have come a long way in the last 10 years, from a patchwork of local providers with a few dominant nationwide ISP's such as AOL, Earthlink, Mindspring, NetZero, MSN and Compuserve to a consolidated few national providers and few remaining local providers, with new competition now arising around low-price point (sub $5 monthly) dial-up access, and greater competition among multiple large providers of high speed (broadband) connections based on DSL (via telephone line) and cable (via TV cable provider) service.
ISP's are sometimes also hosting providers, but have a very poor record as such. In general, companies such as realwebhost.net which specialize in domain name and hosting services provide far better value, price, and telephone technical support to assist customers with hosting needs.
J
JavaScript
A scripting language to enable Web page authors to design interactive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently. JavaScript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web developers to jazz up their sites with dynamic content.
JPG
JPG or .jpg Joint Photographic Experts Group (pronounced: jay-peg) One of the two most common types of image formats used on the World Wide Web (the other being GIF). The shorter extension, JPG (without the E), is usually used in association with PC platform files.
Jump Page
A Web page that appears to users that have clicked on a link in an online ad. The purpose of this "jump page" or splash page is to capture the user's attention in order to promote special offers or to measure the response to an online ad.
K
L
landing page
landing page Another name for a page on a Web site to which people are referred via links from other Web sites, especially from ad banners.
Link
a.k.a. links, absolute link, relative link Text or images on a Web page that a user can click on in order to access or connect to another document. Links are most commonly thought of as the technology that connects two Web pages or Web sites.
Long Domain Name
domain name that contain more than 26 characters are said to be long. In the past, domain names could not be longer than 26 characters, but the limit was later increased to 67 characters (including the extension, such as .com or .org).
M
mailbot
a.k.a. autoresponder An e-mail server that automatically responds to requests for information.
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is when a web hosting company provides services for their dedicated servers. Managed hosting can be thought of as having the space and freedom of a dedicated server, but with the perks and services that are provided to shared-server packages. As businesses continue to grow online, so has the need for managed security, storage, and database monitoring.
Megabyte
A megabyte is a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,048,576 bytes of information. A single keystroke is equal to a single byte of information.
N
News Feed
Refers to RSS, a technology that allows you to see when Web sites have added new content. For example on a news Web site, you can subscribe to the news feed and get the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as its published.
New Media
Refers to any kind of communications medium that is interactive, such as the Internet.
O
Online Profiling
Used primarily by ad networks as a basis for targeted marketing, it's a method of combining cookies, Web site traffic analysis, and personal information to create a profile of a customer's browsing and buying habits. An online profile includes how much time customers spend in certain areas of a Web site and which ads they click on.
Open Source
Open source is any program whose source code is made available for use or modification by users, developers, or hackers. Historically, the makers of proprietary software have generally not made source code available. Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available. For example, in an effort to stay viable in its browser competition with Microsoft, Netscape made its browser source code (Mozilla) freely available, encouraging users to improve it.
.org
The org in .org means organization (pronounced: dot-org) One of several top-level domains primarily assigned to the URLs of nonprofit organizations in the U.S.
Outsource
To hire an independent contractor or consultant, from outside of the company, to perform a particular task or project, instead of using internal personnel. Many web design companies outsource their work to countries like India.
P
Packet
Information moves around the Internet in `packets'; chunks of data each with their own destination address. Think of packets as sealed envelopes containing data, with addresses written on them. They all go through the system, and usually end up at the correct destination.
Packet Switching
Packet Switching is essentially a method of data transmission where small blocks of data are transmitted rapidly over a channel (such as a phone line) that is dedicated to the connection only for the duration of the packet's transmission. Packet switching is one of the fundamental concepts responsible for computer networking and the Internet. It was developed in the 1960’s by Paul Baran, and was designed to help the military build a communications network capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.
POP3
Account A POP3 account is a standard e-mail inbox, a place on the server used for storing incoming e-mail messages. E-mail accounts usually come as “POP3” accounts. A specific amount of space is often allotted to a POP3 account, and going over can cause incoming mail to “bounce”, or return to sender.
Q
query
A question or request to find a particular file, Web site, record, or set of records in a search engine or database.
queue
A waiting area for e-mail messages, files, print jobs, or anything else that is being sent from one device to another. With e-mail
R
RAM
Random-Access Memory (pronounced: ram) Hardware inside your computer that retains memory on a short-term basis and stores information while you work. RAM is one of the things that makes your computer run faster. It comes in 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit, 256-bit, and higher, and you can add additional "blocks" of RAM, depending on your computer.
RDBMS
Relational Database Management System A type of database management system (DBMS) that stores data in the form of related tables. RDBMSs are powerful in that they impose few assumptions about how data is related or how it will be extracted from relational databases.
S
Server
A server is a computer that processes requests for HTML and other documents that are components of a webpage. All website hosting takes place on a server of some type. A server can be as small as a personal computer or span thousands of Gigabytes in the case of large telecommunication companies.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting refers to the practice of splitting up server resources among many customers in order to defer the cost to many different customers. This means that the shared host accounts are more affordable. Additionally, shared servers are often run by the ISP itself, meaning that they handle security issues and technical operations as they arise in a “managed” environment.
Secure Socket Layer
(SSL) protocol A secure transmission protocol whereby data transmitted between server and client is encoded using an encryption key (usually 128-bit) in such a way that it virtually cannot be "cracked" and read by any party which may intercept the information in between the server and client.
SSL protocol is used on virtually all websites which feature e-commerce purchasing and transmission of payment data, as well as most websites which require the exchange of sensitive information in between the client and the server, such as medical information, personal data, even name and address data.
To use SSL, you must have a dedicated IP address for the server, and a Secure SSL Certificate such as those sold at realwebhost.net at the lowest price on the internet for the highest level of security and the best compatibility with the widest range of browsers of any certificate on the market.
A Secure Socket Layer only provides for secure transmission of data and does not perform credit card validation, verification, or merchant processing, although those tasks are all performed from clients entering information onto secure pages.
SSI (Server Side Includes)
Server Side Includes (SSI) is a practice whereby a set of tags are embedded in the HTML code of a web page and which are populated (replaced by something else) when the web page is actually viewed by the user. The content which the server provides to these tags is determined by many factors, and can be programmed by the web designer to provide specific and unique information to different types of web visitors (persons viewing the web page). This is often done in situations where the server makes a determination as to which user is logged in an provides specific information to that user relative to that user's account with with web host. SSI is run by a Perl script on UNIX/Linux servers.
Shell Account
A UNIX or Linux server can offer varying degrees of access to use of the computer by the creation of a shell account allowing the user to log in and browse, change, modify, update, and delete files from a given set of files and folders to which the user has permissions established. Access to shell accounts by users is typically done by Telnet (not secure) or by more secure means such as SSH, the popular software for which is called SecureCRT. Shell accounts are considered very dangerous from a security point of view when the server is a shared web server (has multiple client users) because crackers can often use unscrupulous means to gain full (root) access to servers from within shell accounts without full access. This allows for mischief to occur. UNIX/Linux servers are generally viewed as far more safe .
Storage
Storage on a server is simply the memory space available to hold files.
T
TCP/IP
TCP/IP stands for Transmissions Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. TCP is the host to host connection used by computers to govern networking and IP passes the individual packets of information between computers. TCP/IP is responsible for the interconnecting of all the smaller networks that make up the entire Internet.
Telnet
The command and program used to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet command/program gets you to the login: prompt of another host. Note that Telnet is not considered secure as it is not encrypted. For secure communications and exchange of passwords, users should always use the SSH protocol rather than Telnet. SSH1 and SSH2 protocols provide the needed security. The software SecureCRT is capable of all of these methods of communication and is the most popular software in use.
Terabyte
Approximately a trillion bytes of data, or 1000 million gigabytes or 1,000,000 MB, or 8 million data bits. One thousand of these will constitute one gigabyte. One million of these will constitute one terabyte. Transfer Total amount of data which is sent from from a web site to client computers accessing the sit. Transfer measurements include all all HTML code from all displayed web pages, as well as all images, sounds, video, and downloaded data. See also Data Transfer for more information.
Traffic
Traffic on a website refers to the amount of people who visit the site on a given moment. Traffic also describes all of the interaction that visitors take part in, such as surfing or using e-mail while on that site. Companies pay particular attention to the amount of traffic on their sites because it gives them an indicator of how successful their website is.
Transfer Rate
Transfer rate and bandwidth is essentially the same thing, referring to the amount of data that can flow through a communications channel over a given time.
T-1
A dedicated line connection capable of carrying data at 1,544,000 bits-per-second. At maximum theoretical capacity, a T-1 line can move a megabyte in less than 10 seconds. Although once considered to be a very substantial bandwidth, T-1 is now eclipsed by even the download speed of many cable modems which operate at up to 3,500,000 bits-per-second. To get an idea of what this speed can do, note that this high transmission rate is still not fast enough for full-screen, high-resolution, full-motion, uncompressed television video, for which is needed at least 10,000,000 bits-per-second.
T-3
A high bandwidth, dedicated line connection capable of carrying data at 44,736,000 bits-per-second, or approximately 30 times the speed of a T-1 line.
U
Upload
Uploading refers to transferring files from a client, such as your home computer, to a host, such as your web hosting company. Uploading is usually accomplished with the help of an FTP client. Think of it as the opposite of downloading.
URL
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is an Internet address (for example, http//:www.domainname.com/example).In this instance, the URL consists of an access protocol (HTTP), the domain name (www.domainname.com) and optionally the path of a file or resource residing on the server. Traditionally, the domain portion (.com) of the URL denotes what sector of society the website belongs to. (.com) denotes a commercial site.
V
Virtual Hosting
Multiple websites share the system resources of a single server. In other words, it provides a customer with a limited amount of server space to create their web site. Bandwidth and storage space is distributed among many clients, who all "share" the same physical server. Hosting companies provide this service by maintaining several large servers, and on those large servers they maintain a number of virtual web hosts.
Virtual private Hosting
To overcome the bridge between shared hosting and dedicated hosting, comes the concept of virtual private hosting. It still shares a machine or disk, but the web server software and indeed the entire operating system environment is usually isolated for each site in a virtual hosting environment. So, you might have a computer or disk with 20 sites on it, 20 different web servers for those sites, and 20 isolated operating environments.
W
Webmail
Unlike normal e-mail, which is accessed through a mail program configured for use on a specific computer, Webmail allows you to access your account on a Web page, using your browser. This means you can read, send, and organize your e-mail on any computer, anywhere in the world, with an Internet connection.
Web Server
A web server is a computer that stores websites and their related files for viewing on the Internet. Visitors wishing to access the sites and files simply type in the corresponding URL to the site they wish to view. Web hosting is big business in the age of electronic commerce.
Web Site
A web site is a collection of web pages that reside together on the World Wide Web and are connected with a common theme, and usually a common domain name. Websites can exist across multiple servers, and multiple IP addresses, and even multiple domain names, but have a common theme, and are inter-connected by hyperlinks in such a way that they function together as a complete site.
www
WWW stands for World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is the collection of networks that make up the Internet. The World Wide Web incorporates HTML files that can be viewed by any web browser connected to the Internet. The World Wide Web was created by the folks at CERN in 1991 in order to create a global network out of the many networks operating in various parts around the world.
WC3
An organization that exists to realize the full potential of the Web, it is a special interest group comprised of programmers, Web developers, execs in the industry, and users who help define specifications for the development of Web technology.
X
XML
XML is a pared-down version of SGML, designed especially for Web documents. It enables Web authors and Web developers to create their own customized tags to provide functionality not available with HTML. For example, XML supports links that point to multiple documents (as opposed to HTML links, which can reference just one destination each). XML provides a powerful set of tools for developing a new generation of Web applications.
Y
Z
ZIP
A Windows-based compressed file. ZIP is the industry standard for data compression technology, in part because it can hold directory structures in addition to files. On the internet, large graphics and programs are usually compressed as ZIP files and then made available for download. After you download a ZIP file, you need to use a decompression software program to "unzip" it.