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Web Hosting Glossary

Posted 08th January, 2014 by Aliysa

It's the start of a new year, and the perfect time for a new challenge - building a website for your business or project. We understand that to the average person, web hosting and the Internet can seem more-or-less like a foreign language, with countless terms and concepts to get your head around. Although our customer support team is renowned for providing jargon-free technical advice and support for novice and experienced users alike, we believe it can often be beneficial to have an understanding of some of the technical lingo. Therefore we’ve compiled this A-Z glossary of hosting and technology terms you may encounter, to get your project kick-started this new year.

A


Access Logs
record all requests for single files that individuals have made to your website, which is useful for collecting statistical data about site traffic.

Auto Responders
are pre-written replies that can be setup to automatically respond to emails, which is useful for situations where you’re out of office and not able to respond to emails.

B


Backups
are copies of your websites files and databases. You can restore your site to a specific date using these. As standard we take multiple daily backups of your site, so there’s no need to take manual backups.

Bandwidth
is the rate at which data can be transferred from one destination to another, in a given time period. It determines the volume of traffic your site can receive. You can see how much traffic or bandwidth our Cloud hosting packages support here.

C


Caching
is the temporary storage of content, for the purpose of quicker retrieval. In the case of web caching, it can offload tasks from the web server, increasing its performance and efficiency.

Catch-all
gives you the ability to forward all emails sent to your domain to a specified email address. To reduce the amount of spam you receive we suggest you do not use a catch-all.

Clustered Hosting
is when a site is hosted by a group of servers, sharing resources and acting together as one machine, increasing reliability and performance. The Tsohost Cloud is our clustered hosting platform.

Cron Jobs
schedule tasks to be executed on a Linux server automatically at a specified frequency. They can be used for automating anything from re-indexing a web-page, to running scripts, to downloading emails. Please note that the Cron Jobs feature on the Cloud is only suitable for advanced users.

D


Domain Names
are user friendly address that visitors use to find your website online - ours is tsohost.com. Domain names significantly contribute to a sites identity; it’s important to find a domain that’s memorable and suits your sites purpose - use our domain search tool to find the perfect domain for you.

DNS (Domain Name System)
is the protocol that converts alphabetic domain names into numeric IP addresses which are understood and used as identification by computers connected to the Internet.

E


Email Forwarders
enable you to forward or send emails received by one address to another separate address, which is handy if you have multiple email accounts, or if you have an embarrassing email address you want to hide!

F


FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
allows you to transfer files between two machines connected to the Internet i.e. transferring web page files from the creator’s machine to the server hosting the website.

G


Grid Host
is the control panel you use to manage every aspect of your Tsohost hosting account for your websites.

H


Hosted Sites
is the number of individual websites that can be hosted on one hosting package.

.htaccess files
provide a way to make configuration changes to directories it is placed in.

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
defines how web browsers should respond to commands and how files are transferred on the world wide web.

I


IMAP
is a way of accessing your emails, where you’re effectively reading them off of the mail server, allowing you to re-access emails from multiple devices.

IP Addresses
are unique identifiers - much like a phone number - that allow communication between machines on a network i.e. all devices connected to the Internet. Domain names act as human-friendly ‘nicknames’ for IP addresses (ours is tsohost.com). You can check your IP address here.

J


JavaScript
is a programming language commonly used to give instructions to web browsers, making web pages interactive.

L


Linux Hosting
is the most popular operating system for web servers, with a more extensive range of features than Windows Hosting.

M


MySQL
is the most widely used open source database management system, employed by common web applications such as WordPress and Magento and fully supported on the Cloud.

N


Nameservers
handle queries about the location of a domain names services e.g. where to find a website and where to deliver an email. Our nameservers are ns1.tsohost.com and ns2.tsohost.com.

Node.js
is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js is currently being implemented on the Cloud.

O


OS (Operating System)
is the software at the heart of a computer, that manages hardware, enables applications to run and provides the user interface.

P


Parked Page
is the content that visitors to a parked domain see, i.e. a domain that has been registered but is not in use. To set your site to a parking page select ‘Parking Page’ from the Platform drop-down menu on the right of the Cloud dashboard.

PHP
is a scripting language that is commonly used for web development purposes and can be embedded into HTML. The PHP versions supported on the Cloud are 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4.

PHPMyAdmin
is a PHP-based tool used to edit and administer a MySQL database within a web browser.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3)
is a way to retrieve email from a mail server, where emails are downloaded from the server, meaning they can only be accessed on a single device. IMAP is the newer protocol, more commonly used.

public_html
is the directory that stores all web content to be displayed on a website on the Internet.

R


Redirects
allows you to redirect from one website URL that was requested, to another website. For example www.tsohost.com redirects to www.tsohost.com.

Records (A/MX/CNAME)
are the DNS instructions used to translate domain names to IP addresses.

Reseller Hosting
lets you offer our hosting platform - the Cloud - to your very own customer-base. Our reseller account is extremely flexible and our system can be fully white labelled.

S


SSH (Secure Shell)
is a program to gain secure access to a remote computer i.e. a computer in a distant location.

SSL Certificate
facilitates a secure connection between a website and its visitors and verifies a websites identity. Sites with a signed SSL certificate will have a green padlock symbol or green ‘https’ displayed in your web browsers address bar.

Sub Domain
is a domain that is part of a larger domain. For example, mail.x.com and blog.x.com are subdomains of the domain, x.com. Sub domains are useful for breaking up websites into different sections, e.g. for different languages or product categories.

T


Ticketing System
is our main channel of customer support, available 24/7/365. You can open a support ticket through our website or my.Tsohost.

U


UX
or User Experience design is all the aspects of the end-user’s interaction with a website.

V


VPS
stands for Virtual Private Server - an isolated hosting environment where a server is virtually separated into multiple independent chunks. Our VPS solutions are suitable for those who require their own dedicated hosting environment, with high quality hardware, without the high cost.

W


Webmail
is an email service which is available on the web e.g. Gmail. Your emails are stored online and are therefore accessible from any Internet connected device with a web browser.

WHOIS Database
is the searchable directory that lists information about a domain. This includes the registration date, the owner’s name and address, contact details of the registrar and name server settings. WHOIS Privacy is a domain add-on that we offer which hides your personal information from these records.

WordPress
is the most popular content management system and blogging tool worldwide used by both novice and experienced users. Our hosting is fully optimised for WordPress and you can install it in just one-click.

X


XML
or Extensible Markup Language is a language similar to HTML, designed for web documents and used to transport and store data.

Z


Zen Cart
is an open source e-commerce application. Zen Cart forked from the osCommerce application in 2003 and can be installed in just one click on the Cloud.

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