Below is the continuation of the previous article: Frequently Used Terms in Web Hosting Industry : Part 1

MS SQL
It is a database management system which is a Microsoft product. MS SQL databases are offered only with Windows Web Hosting packages.

MySQL
MySQL is a database server.It is most commonly used with PHP.MySQL can be availed with Linux Web Hosting packages as well as Windows Hosting packages.

Perl
Perl is preferred and renowned scripting or programming language.It is considered to be one of the most powerful languages used for scripting. It is most commonly used for CGI scripts. With Perl building and testing of programs get simplified.

PHP
PHP is an Open source, server side HTML embedded scripting language that is typically used for creating dynamic web pages. Since it is released under Open source GNU, it is freely downloadable. Web masters prefer to use it on Linux/Unix Servers.

POP3: Post Office Protocol
It is a type of protocol that  is used for receiving E-mails. When using an E-mail client to retrieve email messages, the client communicates with the mail server via POP3.

Primary DNS : Primary Domain Name Server
It is the Primary domain name server for the customer domains. These are the DNS IP numbers often preceeded as ns1.domain.com and ns2.domain.com.

Root Server
Its a machine thats loaded with softwares and data that is required to locate the name servers which contain authoritative data for the top level domains.

SMTP : Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
This is main protocol that is used to send  and receive e-mails over the Internet.

SSL : Secure Socket Layer
It is a protocol designed to enable encrypted and authenticated communications across the World Wide Web.SSL is usually used for secure communication between web browser and the servers. The URL that starts with “https” indicates that the website is secured with SSL.SSL Certificates are installed on the domains of websites that involve online transactions.

TCP/IP
TCP/IP is a protocol that defines the Internet. It indicates how data can be transmitted between hosts. It is most widely used standard of communication. This set of communication protocols to connect to host servers over the Internet.

Telnet
It is a program that is used to login from and Internet site to the other. It is actually a protocol used to access machines placed at remote remote locations. You can connect to any server over the Internet that has telnet server.

TLD : Top Level Domains
It is the suffix of the domain name for example .co., .org , .gov, .net etc. It is the highest level in the hierarchy of doman extensions.

Tomcat
Tomcat is a Java based web server software created to run Java Server Pages (JSP) in the web applications.

Unix
Unix is an operating system that is used on business class computers often known as servers. It is a similar operating system to DOS and MacOS. It is one of the most common operating systems used on servers.

Virtual Server
A virtual server is nothing but a web server that shares its resources with multiple users hosted on a single physical server. In this, users get to experience dedicated server like environment.You are provided with complete admin access of the server.As a matter of fact, a VPS Hosting package is one of the most preferred type of web hosting solution.

Web Server
A web server is nothing but a computer that delivers web pages.It is important that the server is connected to the World Wide Web inorder to deliver webpages upon request.

Web Site Traffic
Website traffic refers to the volume of visitors visiting a website. The tool that measures the traffic is referred as the website traffic reporting tool.

XML : eXtensible Markup Language.
XML is a programming language which allows designers to create their own tags to indicate specific information. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a widely used standard which facilitates the interchange of data across computer applications. It is similar to the language used for Web pages HTML.

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It is always said that before signing any contract, Read it care fully. When you opt for the Web hosting provider there are many technical terms that can confuse you or may be you are completely unaware of it. Unfortunately not all people are honest in this business. This people will take advantage of your innocence. You should not behave like a newcomer. For this a good understanding of the web hosting world and the technical terms used in it.

When you think of hosting your site i.e. you need to upload the web pages on to the server, for this you need to rent the disk space, and also confirm that the amount of the data transfer is enough to get the needed amount of content for the expected number of visitors.

People generally feel shy while asking anything, what we would suggest is never be afraid of asking questions when you pay for it. You should never enter any deal unless you are crystal clear about the deal. Ample of online material is available for you, read few online glossaries on web hosting and building your website.

Take a look at some of the technical terms that you should be aware of while choosing the web host:

Bandwidth: Bandwidth is usually measured in bit per second (bps). This is the amount of data that can be transferred from the device or it is the amount of the data that the connection support. It is usually referred as “Data transfer”

CGI: It is short hand for common gateway interface. It describes how the web server interacts with other software on the same machine.

CGI-Bin Access: It is the ability of the customer to write special programs that reside in the CGI-BIN and manipulate the data on the same site.

Disk Space: This is just like your local had drive which can store your data. This disk space is responsible for storing your web pages, HTML, CGI BIN programs, images, sound clips, e mail, log files, audio, video etc. 1MB is one Million Bytes, 100k is approximately 100000 bytes.

Domain Name: This is the name given to your sites which is unique al over the world. You can access the site by typing this name in the browsers. This name has two or more parts which is separated by periods.

Domain Name registration: When you think of any name to your site, you have to check if it is available or not, it can be used by somebody else. If it is available you have to register it. The process of registering it is Domain Name registration.

FTP: This is the standard way of transferring the data from the web server, without using the web browser. FTP softwares are available to make this task of transferring file to and from the internet easy.

Home Page :  This is the first page of your web site, a first page in a domain’s public directory, usually “index.php” or “index.html” and it loads at first from the site.

Hosting provider: A company that is dedicated to provide server space for hosting the sites.

ISP: It is Internet Service provider. It is the ISP that connects your home or office to the internet. It can be different than your hosting provider. ISP is how you access the internet with your computer.

POP: POP is standard protocol to retrieve the e-mail from your mail server. Almost all the email programs use POP and IMAP. POP is a shorthand for post office protocol.

Server : In the network, you have two types of computers: Client and Server. Server is the computer that is the master computer with mostly with higher resolution and it provides data , acts as a central repository between the client computer.

UNIX : UNIX is an operating system. It is commonly used on servers. It has number of variants, descendants and derivatives which includes LINUX, Apple MAC OS and many others.

URL: It is uniform resource locator. This is the standard means of providing a standard means to a particular resource on the network i.e. World Wide Web. A URL looks like www.host.co.in

We have given some of the terms that are very simple to understand and very important to be known before choosing the web host.

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Some people are yet confused and aren’t sure about the Operating System (OS) to be installed on their servers. Let me clear that doubt, one can have any OS on a server, irrespective of the one they have on their local computing machine. It makes no difference if one has Windows on the local machine and wishes to have Linux OS on the server.

As we all are aware, Windows and Linux are two different operating systems. Windows is widely used on the household/office PC’s. Linux is a newer version of Unix OS. Both contribute to an excellent web hosting environment. Though, we cannot deny the Pro’s and Con’s of each.

An individual usually gets stuck when choosing the OS on the servers. Here are certain factors that may help you to get rid of this confusion.

COST:

Cost is one of the major determining factors when choosing an OS.

Linux is an Open Source OS, which means one does not need to pay the licensing fees inorder to have it. Hence, Linux is comparatively cheaper than Windows. Whereas, one needs to purchase the license of Windows inorder to install it on the machine. A single licensed copy can be installed on one computer. But, with Linux, once you own it, you can freely install it on any number of machines.

RELIABILITY:

Linux is reputed for its stability and reliability. Meaning, Linux server is much less likely to crash than Windows Server. Hence, these servers can offer more uptime to the web-sites hosted on it.

SPEED:

There is practically not much difference in the speed of both the OS, but there is marginally faster speed seen in Linux when processing basic web pages.

SCRIPTS:

Many CGI programs can be found over the Internet. Majority of the Perl scripts, developed on Unix/Linux servers.Most of them can be freely downloaded from the internet.

FUNCTIONALITY:

Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) programming/scripting language are supported by Windows only. It enables oneself to build dynamic web-pages by connecting to Microsoft’s database such as SQL server or Access. Linux, does not offer any support to ASP and Microsoft databases, instead MySQL database is supported.

Today, more and more people are switching to Linux Web Hosting solutions as it is easy to use, more stable, open source, free updates are available and most importantly it is cheap. Hence, unless ASP and MsSQL database is required by a web site, Linux can prove to be a better choice over Windows.

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