Webhosting Terms and Definitions.
I was reading my previous posts and I’ve noticed I have started using some terms that most people who are new to web hosting may not be used to and I figured I should give some definitions for these terms as well as others I will be using in future entries.
If you decided you want to learn how to make a website but don’t have any past experience doing that the last thing you want is to read an explanation that’s just as confusing as the original subject it was trying to explain. What if you need to learn how to get website files on the Internet and the explanation is:
“You must use an FTP client to connect to the web server using the host name or IP address for that hosting account…”
Unless you have experience in what a client, server, or host name is you are not much better off then when you started. These types of explanations happen because people who are involved in the technology industry learn what almost becomes a 2nd language that we talk to each other in. This language is filled with acronyms such as FTP, IP address, or HTML.
On the surface you may thing it’s used only to make ourselves feel smarter then others, and some people do enjoy doing that, but it actually comes down to making something shorter and quicker to communicate.
List of definitions
I am going to list some of the most common terms and their definitions to help you better understand my updates as well as other geeks you may end up talking to in the future.
- FTP - (File Transfer Protocol) - This is basically a type of connection between 2 computers for the purpose of moving files from one location to another.
- Client - Basically another word for a program that accesses another computer. Two common types of “clients” you will use are for FTP and Email.
- Server - A computer that has information such as email or website files and delivers (or serves) that information to other computers.
- Domain - This is the name given to your location on the Internet. These usually end in .com, .net, .org but there are hundreds of other endings you can get for your domain name.
- Hosting - This is a service provided by a company so you can use their server to display your website pages and also send and receive emails for your domain name.
- IP Address - A series of numbers put into four groups and seperated by periods (example: 209.25.195.50). This number is the location of a piece of equipment, such as a server, on the Internet.
I want to keep these descriptions as simple as possible but there is something else I wanted to add for IP Address. As I mentioned before, a domain name such as web-hosting-basics.com points to an IP Address where the website files are stored. This makes it easy to remember the names of websites rather then a large collection of IP Addresses.
If I moved my website to another web hosting company I would get a different IP Address but the name web-hosting-basics.com would still come with me. This is similar to saying Franks house. Frank may live at 1234 Main st. now but if he moves he could be living at 2424 Palm Drive and then that address becomes Franks house.
That’s all for now, I will post another entry on definitions as we progress and start covering new areas. I don’t want to push too fast through these updates and end up leaving people behind because I made an assumption about what people already know.
We are getting closer the point of learning how to make a website but I plan on keeping this very basic so I hope you are enjoying these updates. I think I will start posting some of my information I found on different web hosting companies with the research I did. I was very surprised to see so many of them offer very low prices for a nice looking web hosting package, here’s one example from Host Monster:
Professional Web Hosting $5.95
Less then $6.00 a month? I think my first hosting I had was over 8 or 9 years ago and was about $14.00 a month and didn’t come with anywhere near the amount of services that the new hosting accounts do.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Thanks,
Jim.
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