Several unique terms and phrases describe the features of services we review on this site, some easier to grasp than others. This list briefly defines terms relevant to Web Hosting.

Ratings

Feature Set

Does the hosting plan offer a lot of bells and whistles? The list of the hosting plan's abilities and unique attributes that the company uses to describe their product is often called the feature set.

Customer Service

This is one of the most important areas that we at Web Hosting Review judged a company on. Are there many different ways to communicate or get help? Was the support staff knowledgable and friendly? Did you receive answers immediately or did you have to wait several days? Is technical support available 24/7?

Control Panel

How easy is it to manage your site through the control panel? Can you easily find the controls you need? Are the functions intuitive or do you need to consult a manual or technical support?

Features

Disk Space (GB)

Also known as Web space. The amount of allocated storage you are given on your Web hosting account. This enables you to store files, Web pages, email, databases and graphics. Web space is measured in MB (megabytes).

Monthly Data Transfer (GB)

Also known as your Traffic or Bandwidth. Each time visitors access a Web page, image, audio, video or other element on your site, traffic is generated. Your aggregate traffic is the sum of all outward-bound, inward-bound, email and FTP traffic. Measured in GB (gigaBytes).

Server Uptime Guarantee

Server uptime is confirmed by sophisticated server monitoring systems. Well-maintained equipment and an experienced server administration team can keep servers up and your data accessible essentially this percentage of time.

Sub-Domain Supported

Also known as a third-level domain. Domain names are composed of at least two levels, a top-level domain and a second-level domain. The top-level domain is the suffix or extension attached to Internet domain names (for example, .com, .net and .org).

A second-level domain (SLD) is the portion of the URL that identifies the owner associated with an IP address. For example, "yoursitedomain.com" is a second-level domain, as it includes the domain name "yoursitedomain" and the top-level domain "com."

If you need to further distinguish your second-level domain name, you can use a third-level domain name, or subdomain, such as "help.yoursitedomain.com." Typically a third-level domain name is used to refer to different servers within different departments of a company or to a subdirectory on the same server.

Domain Name Search/Registration

The process that must be completed before users can access your Web site. The registration process involves two basic steps: Reserving your domain name and then registering the domain name with the name server so that the IP address of your domain name can be disseminated throughout the Internet.

Website Traffic Statistics

Detailed information regarding your Web site, including the number of hits, the source of those hits, most popular pages and amount of data transferred, as well as other useful information.

Website Builder

Various site creation tools are available from several companies. They allow the user to create rich HTML content without having to know anything about HTML. With numerous design templates to choose from, site creation tools offer many designs that are sure to fit your needs.

Email Features

Email Addresses

The number of email accounts you can create and use with your website.

Email Forwarding

The feature that enables you to have email messages sent to one address automatically forwarded to a different email address.

For example, you can specify that all email messages sent to you@yourcompany.com be immediately forwarded to you@yourISP.com.

Email Aliases

An email alias is a "virtual" email account. It enables you to use an email address that doesn't really exist and have all the messages sent to that address routed to a real email account. For example, you may want to provide a link on your Web site that enables visitors to send email to the Web Master, who is really you.

You can use the email alias webmaster@yourdomain.com but have the email routed to your real email account. You can also use email aliases to overcome problems with duplicate email addresses. If the email address you want to use is already taken, you can still use it as an alias and then route the email to a valid address.

Example: sales@yoursitedomain.com forwards to joe@yoursitedomain.com

WebMail

A method for accessing email messages through a Web browser using HTTP. Web-based email applications enable you to check your email from any location as long as you have a browser and an Internet connection.

Catch-all Email

A type of email account designed to "catch" any email messages addressed to your domain (@yourdomain.com) but not addressed to an actual POP3 email account or email alias.

Example: an email message that has been sent by error to jjoe@yoursitedomain.com instead of joe@yoursitedomain.com shall be sent to the Catch-All address.

Auto Responders

An automated email reply sent in response to each incoming message for a specific email address. This is also known as an "autoresponder." For example, you can use an auto-response to automatically send every customer who contacts you via email a standard "Thank You" email response.

SMTP Email

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A protocol for sending email messages across the Internet. It is used in conjunction with both POP3 and IMAP, protocols that enable you to download messages from a mail server to your computer. SMTP is used for outgoing mail while POP3 and IMAP are used for incoming mail.

Spam Protection

Servers have special software installed that helps to detect and filter out spam. They can't catch it all, but they do catch a lot of junk mail so you don't have to filter through it.

Supported Environments

CGI Directory

A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the "CGI program") talks to the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. Usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an Email message, or turning the data into a database query. You can often see that a CGI program is being used by seeing "cgi-bin" in a URL, but not always.

PHP

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor An open-source scripting language and interpreter. PHP is used primarily on UNIX Web servers and is an alternative to Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. PHP script is embedded within a Web page. The Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations specified in the PHP script. Web pages with embedded PHP script can use the file extensions .php, .php3 or .phtml.

On shared servers, PHP is supported running as a CGI binary. Dedicated servers, however, can support PHP as an Apache module.

Perl

An interpretive programming language designed for processing text. Perl is one of the most popular languages for creating CGI scripts.

Front Page Extensions

FrontPage extensions are a set of programs on a Web server which allow users to author, administer, and browse Microsoft FrontPage extended websites, and to add enhanced functionality such as hit counters, search forms, and discussion Webs to their sites.

Active Server Pages (ASP)

Active Server Page. An HTML page that contains scripts (VBScript or JavaScript) that are processed by a Web server before the page displays to the user. ASP pages end with the extension ".asp." Because ASP pages are dynamically generated, they enable you to tailor, or customize, your Web content to the customer.

MySQL Database

A database system which can be used to manage customer records, organize survey data, and even create Web-based applications. Also a multi-user, multi-threaded SQL database server. MySQL offers speed, robustness and ease of use.

Data Center

Server Backup

How often are your files backed up at the server level?

Redundant Power Backup

Is there a backup power source in the event of an emergency?

Customer Support

Toll-Free Phone Support

Live phone customer service.

Live Chat Support

Chat online live with tech support to get your questions and or problems resolved. This is a lot like Instant Messaging through a browser.

24/7 Email/Online Support

Ask questions through an online form or email address. Each question and answer is documented.

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