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.com

A domain name used by commercial enterprises.

.gif

Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) filename extension

.jpg or .jpeg

Filename extensions of images in JPEG format.

.mpg or .mpeg

Filename extension for files in MPEG format.

.zip

File name extension for files compressed with PKZIP program or similar.

Address

Unique identifier of a web page. URL (Uniformed Resource Locator) is more frequently used for this purpose.

Anonymous FTP (Anon FTP)

A method for downloading and uploading files using FTP protocol without having a username or a password. In place of a username, word "anonymous" is used, and in place of a password, email address is usually used. If a hosting plan offers this service, your users will be able to download or upload files with FTP without having their own account.

Anonymous Remailer

A SMTP server that allows sending anonymous email messages. It removes or changes the "From" field of all messages that it processes.

Apache

Apache is an open-source (source code is freely available and can be shared) HTTP Web server software. According to Netcraft survey, it is currently the most popular web server on the Net. It is usually run on Unix operating system versions like Linux or BSD, but it can also be run on Windows. It is a full-featured server with many powerful add-ons freely available. Apache's major competitor is Microsoft's IIS.

Applet

Most often refers to a small Java program designed to run in a Web browser. Java applets run in a sandbox, so they can't perform unauthorized functions like file reading or opening Net connections to other computer from your computer.

Archive

Archives are large files containing valuable data. Archives are often compressed to save space.

ASP

Active Server Pages. ASP is Microsoft's server-side scripting technology. An Active Server Page has an .asp extension and it mixes HTML and scripting code that can be written in VBScript or JScript. ASP is distributed with Microsoft's IIS web server, so most host using IIS will also offer ASP for dynamic web programming. ASP.NET is the next version of ASP. Other popular server-side scripting languages are Perl, PHP, ColdFusion, TCL, Python, and JSP.

AU

Audio file format for Unix systems.

Authentication

Authentication is used to confirm the identity of the other party involved in the data transmission.

AVI

Audio/Video Interleave. Audio file format used by Microsoft Widows.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Browser

Computer program that allows to search the World Wide Web and displays the content of the webpages. Examples are Mosaic, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera and Internet Explorer.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

A style-sheet determines how the HTML document is displayed by the browser. The current version of CSS is version 2 (CSS2).

Certificate

Digital ID used for SSL transactions. It includes owner's public key, the name of the owner, the issuer, hostname, and the expiration date.

CGI

Common Gateway Interface. A standard for interfacing web servers with an executable application. A CGI program can be written in any language like Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin. CGI is often used to process data from HTML forms.

cgi-bin

A directory on the server where the executable CGI scripts reside.

Client

A computer program that requests a service from the server program, usually over the network.

Client/Server

A network architecture where a system is divided into two parts: the client and the server.

Control Panel

Control panel included in web hosting packages is an online web-based application that allows you to easily manage different aspects of your account. Most control panels will let you upload files, add email accounts, change contact information, set up shopping carts or databases, view usage statistics, etc.

Cookie

A Cookie is a piece of data that is saved in the user's browser by the web server. It is used to customize user's browsing experience.

Data transfer

In Web hosting, the total size of files transferred by an account in a month. Sites with a lots of graphics, downloads, or streaming audio or video and a lot of visitors will require plans with more available transfer.

Database

Data in a structured format stored on a web server. Most popular type is a relational database. The most common query (information retrieval) language for relational databases is SQL. Linux-based hosts most commonly include MySQL database and Windows NT-based hosts usually include Access or MS SQL databases.

Detailed Usage Statistic/Access to Raw Log File

Web-Men.Net gives you detailed graphical and tabular usage statistics for your website grouped by weeks, days, and hours. Using this information, you can track how many hits you are getting, where those hits are coming from, which page is the most popular, how much data transfer is occurring, and more. Access to raw log files allows you to analyze the usage using even more sophisticated programs.

Disk Space

Everything related to your website is stored on disk: your regular html files, images, multimedia files, anonymous ftp files, POP mail messages, cgi-scripts and so on.

Domain Name System

Internet service that maps Internet domains into corresponding IP addresses. DNS database is distributed and replicated among many DNS servers, so when you change your domain's IP address, the changes take a while to propagate.

Domain name

Domain name is an easy-to-remember address that can be translated by DNS into server's IP address. Domain names are hierarchical. Domain's suffix indicates which TLD (top level domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, or .jp. Recently ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) added several new TLDs, like .biz and pro.

E-Business

Using web and Internet technologies in conducting the business activities. Also expanding end enhancing traditional business practices by means of the Internet.

Electronic Mail (E-Mail, email)

One of the most popular Internet services. Basically it's the transmission of text based messages. An email message can also contain more structured elements, like tables, images and multimedia. It can also be used to send various data files, by means of attachments. You have to have an email account in order to be able to use this service.

Encryption

Encryption means encoding data using a cryptographic cipher. Encrypted data can be read (decrypted) only by an authorized entity.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions. Lists of frequently asked questions and answers to them are used as a way of sharing knowledge on the web. They are a very good way of finding solutions to different problems. Some companies include them in their websites to minimize the number of Customer Support inquiries. See Web-Men.Net FAQ.

Firewall

Firewall refers to either software-only or separate software and hardware combination that serves to protect an internal network or a computer from attacks and unauthorized access by sitting between the Internet and the internal network.

FrontPage Extensions

Microsoft's server-side applications that lets users of FrontPage Web site creation tool to incorporate "web-bots" that perform pre-packaged function like full-text Web site searching or adding a hit counter. FrontPage extensions are also available for Unix-based operating systems but some hosts refuse to use them because of potential security holes.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol defining how to download and upload files between a client and an FTP server. Popular client FTP programs are CuteFTP and WS_FTP. Major browser also have FTP capability.

Hit

In the WWW world "hit" is used to describe a single request made by a web browser.

Home Page

Main web page owned by a company, organization or an individual. This is the page that is initially displayed when user makes a request for a particular domain name.

Host

A networked computer dedicated to providing a certain kind of service. Usually refers to a computer that stores the website files and has a web server running on it.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language. It is the language in which web pages are written. It allows the images to be combined with text and offers wide range of formatting capabilities. One of the most important features of HTML is hypertext, that allows web pages to be liked one to each other. HTML relies on tags, which have the following form: - an opening tag, - a closing tag. HTML code is stored in a normal text file.

HTTP

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The main protocol used to transfer and receive data over the World Wide Web.

Hyperlink

A part of the web page that links to another web page. By clicking on a hyperlink user redirects the browser to another page. The word hyperlink is sometimes shortened to just "link".

Hypertext

A text on the web page that is linked to another webpage. Browsers usually display hypertext as underlined and in blue color.

Image Map

An image displayed on the webpage that has different areas that are hyperlinks. By clicking on different parts of the image browser can be redirected to another webpage, or can display modified version of the current one.

Internet

Not to be confused with internet (with lowercase i). The word Internet refers to all the computer networks worldwide that are connected together. TCP/IP is the de facto standard protocol set for Internet.

IP

(Internet Protocol) is the main protocol used on the Internet.

IP Address

Internet Protocol Address. A unique number identifying all devices connected to the Internet. This number is usually shown in groups of numbers from 0 to 255, separated by periods, for example 207.46.230.218.

IRC

Internet Relay Chat. Multi-user chat service. IRC users can go into public or private channels to discuss a topic or transfer files. IRC servers are connected into networks. The most popular IRC client program is mIRC.

ISP

Internet Service Provider. A company that provides its subscribers with Internet access. Customers have a username and a password and can dial-up or use a cable or DSL line to connect to ISP's network which is connected to the Internet.

Java

Sun's popular programming language. Java is a platform-independent, crash-protected, object-oriented language that can be used to write applets that run in a browser, servlets that run server-side, or independent programs. Java's syntax is similar to that of C++.

JavaScript

Simple, client-side programming language created by Sun and Netscape. JavaScript can be embedded in HTML pages to create interactive effects and do tasks like validate form data. JavaScript is a separate language from Java. All popular modern browsers support JavaScript. A few hosts support server-side JavaScript.

LAN

Local Area Network. A network of devices (computers, printers, hubs) occupying a small area. Usually LANs do not span more than one building. LANs are very fast compared to WANs.

Link

Another name for a connection. Sometimes refers to a physical line.

Linux

A free UNIX-like operating system developed by Linus Torvalds. Linux is often used by hosting companies as their operating system.

Login

An alias for an individual that is used for identification and authentication when accessing a computer system. Usually it is a sequence of characters and digits.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft's high-end SQL database running on Windows systems. Here is the official Microsoft SQL Server site.

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions a method of including binary data and other multimedia content within email messages.

Mirror site

An FTP site that stores the exact content of some other site. Mirroring is done in order to minimize the load on a particular server and also to increase reliability.

Modem

MOdulator-DEModulator. A device used to transform digital data sent by a computer to analog format suitable for transmission over a telephone line. It also transforms analog signals back to the digital form. A modem is required for the dial up connection to the Internet.

MP3

An extremely popular lossy audio compression format. Widely used over the Internet.

MPEG

(Motion Picture Experts Group) video compression format for movies or animations.

mSQL

Mini SQL. Light-weight relational database.

MySQL

Most popular open-source relational database. Many Unix-based plans allow MySQL databases. Here is MySQL home page.

Network

A group of electronic devices connected together that are able to communicate with each other.

Offline

The state of the computer when it is not connected to the network.

Online

The state of a computer when it is connected to the network and communicate with other machines.

Operating system

A software heart of the computer. It is a set of programs that manage the hardware resources of a computer, provide the environment for application programs to run and provide the user interface. Most known operating systems are: different flavors of Unix (SunOs, HP-UX, Irix, FreeBSD, Linux,...), MacOS and Windows.

Page

Name for a basic web document. Websites usually consist of many web pages.

Perl

Open source CGI scripting programming language. Written in 1987. Still one of the most popular web programming languages mostly due to its powerful text-manipulation facilities. A huge number of Perl scripts are available for download.

PHP

PHP is an free, open-source server-side scripting language. PHP code can be embedded in HTML. PHP files usually have extensions like .php or .php3. PHP language style is similar to C and Java. Here is the PHP group web site. Other popular server-side scripting languages are ASP, Perl, ColdFusion, TCL, Python, and JSP.

Plug-in

An add-on piece of software that can extend the features of an existing application. For example Netscape browser plug-ins allow displaying of new types of web content, that the browser can't display on its own.

POP

Post Office Protocol. Popular but inflexible email retrieval standard. All messages are downloaded at the same time and can only be manipulated on a client machine. Current version is POP3.

POP3 Email Accounts

These are your email mail boxes in our server that can be accessed directly to retrieve your mail using such programs as Eudora, Outlook Express, and Netscape Mail. Each POP3 account has its own password to ensure privacy. You can also check your email from anywhere around the world that you have access to the Internet. See our Email Hosting Package.

Port

A socket on the computer or other network device used to connect it to the network.

PPP

Point to Point Protocol. A network protocol widely used to connect computers to the Internet. Most often used on a telephone line.

Protocol

A set of rules by following which two parties can communicate. The TCP/IP protocol suite is the basis of Internet.

Raw Logs

Raw access data updated in real-time that can be downloaded and used by any statistics program. Typically each line show the user's IP, date and time of the access, what kind of request was done, which document was requested, HTTP status code, bytes transferred, referrer, and user agent info. If a host doesn't have statistics, you'll need access to raw logs to identify who your site's visitors are. Analyzing raw logs can also provide more detailed look at site accesses than stats.

Scripting Language

A programming language in which programs are the series of commands that are interpreted and then executed one by one. Doesn't require the compilation phase, for the price of lower performance.

Search Engine

An Internet service that stores a vast number of web pages and allows for fast searching among them. Also, a piece of software that implements a website search functionality.

Search form

An online form in which a query to the webpages database is specified.

Server

A networked computer that handles client requests for Web pages.

Service Provider

A company that provides access to the Internet, usually for a fee.

Session

All the data exchange between two parties, starting when the connection is established and ending when connection terminates.

Setup fee

Initial fee charged by a host to set up your hosting account.

Shopping Cart

Software that allows users to select products from a Web catalog, modify their choices, calculate prices, review their choices, and order them. Many hosts with e-commerce plans offer installed shopping carts, but you can always get a shopping cart of your choice instead.

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Very popular protocol used to transfer email messages across the Internet mail servers.

Spam

Unsolicited email sent in mass quantities to multiple recipients, most often for marketing purposes. Highly annoying and constituting one of the most serious netiquette violations.

Spider

An automated software that retrieves webpages and follows the hyperlinks contained in them. Used to generate indexes used by search engines.

SQL

Structured Query Language. Limited programming language used for updating and performing queries on relational databases. All databases share a common subset of SQL. Most popular SQL databases available with hosting plans are MySQL and MS SQL.

SSH

Secure Shell. Developed by SSH Communications Security, it is a standard for encrypted terminal Internet connections. SSH programs provide strong authentication and encrypted communications, replacing less secure access methods like telnet.

SSI

Server-Side Includes. Instructs the server to include some dynamic information in a Web page before it is sent to a client. This dynamic information could be current date, an opinion poll, etc. Many hosts require that SSI pages have .shtml extension to reduce the load on servers by not having to parse non-SSI pages.

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer. Protocol developed by Netscape to provide encryption for commercial transactions data that should be protected while traveling over the Internet, like credit card numbers. SSL uses https protocol. Before using SSL in commerce, you'll also need to get is a certificate from a Certificate Authority.

Static (or dedicated) IP

If a host offers a static IP, it means that your site will be assigned a unique and unchanging IP address. See the FAQ for some possible advantages of using a static IP.

Streaming

Playing multimedia files (audio and video) without requiring a full download. Audio and video are compressed but they still may require a lot of bandwidth. Most popular streaming media formats are Real Audio/Video.

Subdomain

Subdomain is a way to divide your site into sections with short and easy to remember names. Large websites might make their subdomains point to another server to reduce load on the main www site.

Surfing

Using world wide web is often referred to as "surfing the web".

Switch

A switch is a network device that forwards packets. Switches are more intelligent than hubs in a sense that they forward packets only to the necessary ports and not to all the ports.

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol. is the most important of the network protocols used in the Internet.

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. This protocol suite is the de facto standard for the today's Internet. TCP is a higher level protocol that runs on top of the IP protocol.

Traffic

Data packets being transmitted over a network.

Unix

A family of multi-user operating systems, first developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the 1970s and then licensed to many universities. A basis for Linux, a very popular operating system among web hosts.

UPS

Uninterruptible Power Supply. UPS keeps the server running on a battery for several minutes after a power outage, allowing for a clean shutdown without loss of data. UPS can also shield the server from line voltage spikes and drops.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator is a way of addressing used for world wide web. An URL consist of the type of service (protocol), then the host name and then the file on the host.

Webmaster

A person responsible for the maintenance of a particular website.

whois

An Internet service allowing to obtain the information about the domain name owner.

WWW

World Wide Web (or Web) is the most popular Internet service. It allows access to the information and services from the web servers. A web browser is needed to use the Web.

XML

Extensible Markup Language. A meta-language, abbreviated version of SGML, used to specify other document types used on the Web. Accepted as a format in 1998 to replace dependence on HTML extensions. MSIE 5.5 and Netscape 6 both support XML.

XML processor

A program that can XML documents and access their content.

ZIP

A popular compression utility.