Glossary

Anti-Virus: Nothing is perfect and neither is anti-virus software, but it is better than none! Viruses are types of malicious code that can adversly affect your computing experience. There are other types of malicious code including worms, trojans, backdoors, etc. Anit-virus software has been developed to detect and remove these from a computer system.
CGI: Common Gateway Interface - programming scripts used to handle online actions, such as submitting a form.
Cron tasks: Allows tasks to be repeated.
Disk Space: This is the amount of space available to you to store all of your files on the server. This will include files such as your log files and statistics files, as well as those that form your website. It is measured in Megabytes (MB).
Data Transfer: This is commonly referred to as bandwith and it is the amount of traffic to and from a hosting account, this includes any FTP, emails, as well as people visiting the website.
Email Forwarders: Forwarders are used to send an email addressed to one account to another one e.g. sales@yourcompany.co.uk can be forwarded to steve@yourcompany.com
Email Autoresponders: This allows you to automatically send an email back to the person who sent it, for example if someone sent an email to sales@yourcompany.co.uk you could automatically reply back with an email saying'Thank you for your enquiries, we value your custom and someone will contact you shortly'.
Email Catch All: This allow all emails, including those that have a misspelt recipient (e.g. enqires@yourcompany.co.uk) to be delivered.
Fantastico: Fantastico is used to auto install common script that can add functionality to your website. These will often use a database and webspace. Installing forums and simliar scripts can create a heavy demand on the resource of your account.
FrontPage Extensions: Configured on a web server to add functionality to Microsoft FrontPage.
FTP Accounts: An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account is used to move files to and from a web server.
htaccess: This is Linux's method for restricting how and which files can be accessed.
Mailing Lists: You may need to email a number of people at the same time, maybe friends or clients, a mailing list will allow you to do this.
MySQL: A commonly used open source database.
Parked Domains: Park a domain on another to allow both domains to point to the same website.
PERL: A programming language.
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor - A common open source server-side scripting language used to create dynamic websites.
phpAdmin: Interface used to control any MySQL databases installed.
POP3 Email Accounts: These are email accounts. The POP3 (Post Office Protocol) account is where your emails wait for you until you retrieve them via a mail client, such as Outlook or Outlook Express.
Protected Directories: Used to secure files on a website.
Raw Log Access: Useful if you have an offline statistical package for analysing server logs
SMTP: This is where your outgoing emails are sent to. Tip: use your ISP STMP account to send emails, then you don't use more of your hosting bandwith!
Spam Assassin: This is available for use if needed. It will delete all emails it thinks is spam, very useful if you recieve a lot of spam but potentially dangerous as it may delete emails that you want. Use with caution!
SSI: Server Side Includes, a less well used technology now that PHP is around.
SSL: Secure Sockets Layer used to create a secure site, often used with e-commerce.
Sub-domains: A sub domain is a domain that is below your domain, if your domain is yourcompany.co.uk then a sub-domain would be documents.yourdomain.co.uk, this can be useful to segregate a large site.
User Panel: This is a control panel, used in web hosting to provide the user with the ability to control their hosting account. A common user panel is called cPanel.
Webmail: Have you found that once you leave the office you are without your email? With Webmail you can access your email from any suitable internet connection with a browser, such as Internet Explorer.
Web Statistics: Most hosting services should supply the user with the ability to view statistics relating to their account. The statistics will indicate how many hits a website receives and where those hits have come from. Which is very useful to monitor the effectiveness of the website. AWstats and Webalizer are the two most commonly used statistical packages.