Web Hosting Jargon Buster

In this article, I am going to introduce a few web hosting jargons in a concise way.

Disc Space - The term refers to the amount of physical space devoted to holding the client’s content (which is basically his website files or stored databasesemails).

Monthly Traffic – If people visit one’s site, data is sent from his server to their computer. That data may also include emails received and downloaded to one’s PC. At the end of each month, this request data is summed up to show the total data transfer or monthly traffic.

POP3 Email – POP means ‘Post Office Protocol’ which is a clientserver protocol for collecting email on a server from individual mail accounts.A straightforward online control panel lets client to configure the users and passwords.

IMAP – Instant Message Access Protocol (IMAP in short) differs from POP3 as it allows remote clients to access email stored on a remote server instead of downloading it. A user can always access his mail from his home PC or mobile devices since the mail is centrally stored. Microsoft OutlookOutlook Express and Mozilla MailThunderbird are known to have IMAP support.

Email Redirects – Email redirect is better known as email forwarding. Instead of collecting email from the server, one can arrange for mail addressed to his domain to go to mailboxes hosted elsewhere.

Domain Name – Domain name is a unique name which identifies a website. It workds as a permanent web address and provides a professional web presence. While moving a site can be really messy in case of a domain owned by others, registering one’s own domain name lets him keep same address even if his site is moved.

BBS - BBS stands for ‘Bulleting Board System’, a computerized meeting system where users can have discourses, make announcements and downloadupload files. There are copious BBSs around the world, most of which rely on a direct modem tomodem connection over a phone line using a single computer.

MySQL – MySQL is the most popular open source relational database management system (RDBMS) in the world with more than four million installations powering websites, business applications etc. It is a very effective language for adding, accessing and processing data in a database. MySQL is specially recognized for its flexibility, reliability and most importantly,speed.

CGI – CGI means Common Gateway Interface, a protocol that allows a webpage to execute a program on a web server. Common CGI programs include counters, guest books and forums. CGI scripts are programs written in PERL that is stored on the remote web server and run on the web server in response to a request from a particular user.

PHP - Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a widely used general-purposed server side scripting language. It is very suitable for web development as user can embed it into HTML pages. Many popular CMS systems are based on MySQL.

Virtual Server – A virtual server is a UNIX based server environment which allows multiple independent servers to work on the same hardware. It is the significant trait which discerns virtual server from dedicatedshared servers.