Web Terms Explained

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When looking for the right web host you need toAn Auto responder is a computer program that
think about what service you need. Are you anautomatically answers e-mail sent to it. This is good if
experienced webmaster or a beginner? Those thatyou are going on holiday and don’t want to
are experienced will be able to understand all theignore any e-mail sent while your away. You can set
different features on offer from the differentthe auto responder up very easily to send a
webhost companies. Beginners need to ensure thatmessage to everyone who emails you saying
have a webhost that offer customer service whereyou’re on holiday and will be back on a
they can phone someone and speak to themcurtain date. It is also good for marketing if you want
regarding any queries.every person that contacts you to receive some
Most webhosting companies that have phone supportspecific information.
are aware that most people that call are new to webIf your hosting account comes with Control panel this
development so they are trained to deal withwill be software installed for you the webmaster to
complete novices. They will be able to tell thehandle common tasks associated with webhosting. In
experienced from the beginner in the way they askthis section you can change passwords, create email
questions and will be armed with the right wording toaccounts, alter file permissions, monitor your
explain what you need to know.bandwidth, add auto responders, email
If you’re a beginner but want to know whatforwarders’ and check you statistics. If you
all the features mean to different webhostinghave a database you will be able to access it via the
packages then I shall try to explain them all to you incontrol panel
simple terms.A database is a collection of related information
Disk space or Web Space refers to how much actualstored in a computer in a systematic way. A
hard disk space you are allowed to occupy on yourdatabase typically has a "backend" which is controlled
hosting companies web servers. Generally you haveby administrators via passwords. The "frontend"
more than enough allocated to you than you willdisplays the content to the final user. Some hosting
actually need.packages come with one or more databases and
Bandwidth refers to how much data transferring yourSQL to query the data.
web hosting account allows to run through youMySQL stands for ‘structured query
website. So if you have a home page with is 25 KBlanguage’ which is language used to talk to
and someone visits your page, this will count at 25data stored in a database. If you have a database
KB of data being transferred which means you willfull of stock and you want query the database to
have used up 25 KB of yourfind out how many specific items you have, you
‘bandwidth’. Now if 10 people viewwould use SQL. For example, if your database stored
you webpage then you will have used up 250 KB ofinformation about shoes, and you wanted to know
your ‘bandwidth’. 1 to 5 GBhow many size 8 red shoes you have in stock, SQL
bandwidth is enough for new websites. If your siteswould be the best way to query the data. It can be
starts to get hundreds of thousands ofused with other languages such as PHP to generate
‘hits’ to your site then you aredynamic web pages which depend heavily on storing
getting lots of traffic and might need to ask fordeleting and updating data.
more bandwidth.Crontabs or also known as cron jobs are programs
An FTP account stands for file transfer protocol. Youthat runs on UNIX to run scheduled tasks. These
need an ftp account to log into and upload files. Thistasks could be one time events or recurring tasks.
feature is standard for all paid web hosting accountsThis is good if you want to run a script to update a
as you are buying this space so need an FTP accountbackup of your website.
to access it. You will need an FTP program like FTP.htaccess is a simple ASCII file similar to those
surfer, or CuteFTP which are free to download. Oncecreated in Notepad which is files that allow you to
you have signed up with a web hosting company youoverride certain server configurations. Its main known
will be given a username and password which you willuse is related to implementing custom error pages or
need to put into your FTP program to be able topassword protected directories.
access and transfer your files.If you are offered web stats on your hosting
POP3 Email accounts allows you to create and setupaccount then you will be able to access different
emails accounts with the address being…statistics relating to your website. Depending on what
Some email accounts allow you to choose what aliastype of web statistics program is installed will depend
you want, alias being a nickname that you can applyon what stats you get. The type of information you
to an email account. You could have one called or orwill be able to see is: The number of unique visitors
you could use names like The amount of email boxesto your website each day, daily and monthly traffic,
you receive will depend on the hosting provider andyour bandwidth used, what type of browsers and
what they offer.operating systems your visitors use, the search
E-mail Forwarders are where you can have a copy ofengines people used to find you, the top keywords
any email you receive sent to another email accountused, and much much more..