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What is a domain name?

A domain name is a unique name that is registered to you, and only you are allowed to have a web site and receive emails in this name. Domain names are paid for and registered for you, by web hosting and domain name registration companies. Domain names are allocated to you for a certain period of time from 1 - 10 years, and after this period they are renewable. If you want to keep the name then you must pay a renewal fee. Examples of domain names are google.co.uk and bbc.co.uk

What is a web hosting company?

A web hosting company, provides you with all the services you need to publish and maintain a web site on the Internet. A basic service should provide you with web space to store your site, a domain name (such as yourname.co.uk) and email facilities.

What is a domain name registration company?

These companies are a little more specialised, as they only deal with registering domain names and providing the additional services such as web and email forwarding. However, nowadays it is quite rare to find a company that only provides this service.

What is a search engine?

Search engines store millions of web site addresses in their databases, and they are often the best places to visit, if you are trying to find information on the Internet. Examples of search engines are Google. Bing and Yahoo.

What is a directory?

A directory is very similar to a search engine. The fundamental difference being, a search engine uses automated software to find and index web sites, whereas a directory will have people visiting your site and assessing it's suitability. Examples of directories are Yahoo and Dmoz.

What is web site promotion or submission?

A good way of getting visitors to your site, is to submit or promote your web site to search engines. You can visit each search engine manually and follow their procedure, or you can use services that promote your web site to 1000's of search engines in one go. Both methods have their pros and cons.

What is a web server?

A web server is a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet. One of the uses of these servers is to host your web site.

What is an IP address?

IP addresses are numbers such as 272.255.193.177, that are allocated to computers. They are very similar to your house or flat number, in that the postman knows where to deliver your mail, computers can deliver information to other computers depending on the unique IP address.

What is a browser?

A browser is a piece of software that enables us to browse the World Wide Web. Examples of browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox.

What is a domain name server?

Most people are not able to remember large amounts of IP addresses, but we can remember domain names. However, computers cannot read domain names. A domain name server (DNS) changes the domain name (compila.com), that we enter in our browsers, into an IP address and then forwards us to the web server that hosts that web site.

What is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce is the name for selling over the Internet. This is where companies or individuals sell you their products or services via a web site, with little or no human intervention.

What is web forwarding?

If a site or domain name has web forwarding set up, then visitors will be automatically redirected to another web site. This is useful if you want to have a domain name, that you own, redirected to another web site, without the visitor having to do anything.

What is email forwarding?

Email forwarding will redirect email for a specific domain name to your ISP account. This is useful if you have multiple domain names and you only want to set up one ISP account in your email software, such as Microsoft's Outlook Express.

What is Domain Parking?

Parking is where your domain name registration company will store (or park) your domain name for you, until you have decided what to do with it.

What are Naming Authority Fees?

Through out the world you have various naming authorities. These companies are responsible for the managing of the domain names that are registered in that country. In the UK, Nominet is the naming authority and they charge a fee for each domain name that is registered.

What are transfer fees?

If you want to transfer your domain name from one hosting company to another, then either company may charge you a fee to do so.

What is a POP3 Mailbox?

A POP3 mailbox is similar to your letterbox at home. It is a specific area on your hosting company's server, that stores the email that you receive.

What is an email alias?

An email alias is the part of your email address before the @ sign. i.e. info, sales, webmaster, john, peter etc.

What is a catchall email alias?

This is where any email received, with any email alias, is stored in one POP3 mailbox. This saves having to set up multiple POP3 mailboxes for different aliases.

What is a mailing list?

A mailing list is a facility that can be set up, for groups of people that have a common interest. For instance Ferrari cars. This way any email sent to the list is automatically sent to all the list's subscribers.

What are auto-responders?

An auto-responder is a system that will automatically reply to people that have sent you emails, with a preformated email message. For instance, if you are away on holiday, you could set up an auto-responder that tells people that you are away, and that you will deal with their email when you return.

What is web space?

Web space is where your web site is stored. It is an allocated amount of hard drive space (i.e. 500Mb), on your hosting company's web server.

What is a cgi-bin?

A cgi-bin is a directory on your web space, where you can store and execute CGI scripts.

What are Perl, C++, PHP and Java?

These are all programming languages, that can be run on a web server. Programs or scripts written in these languages, can provide your web site with additional functionality and higher levels of dynamic content.

What are Server Side Includes (SSI)?

SSI are HTML tags that are inserted into HTML pages, and when this page is opened in someone's browser, these tags are executed. Some of there uses are to log statistics or run other programs, such as an advert banner rotation script.

What are Frontpage Extensions?

These are only necessary for users of Microsoft Frontpage. They are a set of programs that are loaded onto the web server, that enable you to publish your web site from within FrontPage and take advantage of all the web site features that are included within the software. These features include animation, site searching and forums.

What is mySQL?

mySQL is a very fast and efficient database system. For more information please visit http://www.mysql.com

What is a Secure Socket Layer (SSL)?

You may have noticed that when you visit some web sites, that the URL changes from http:// to https://, and a padlock appears in your browser. SSL is a system that enables you to obtain confidential information from visitors, in a safe and secure method. SSL encrypts any data that is entered and is therefore more difficult for potential hackers to intercept.

What are Password Protected Directories?

If you only want paid customers or site members, to enter a certain part of your web site, then you can password protect this area. When visitors try to enter this protected part of your web site, they are asked to enter a username and password, and only if they enter valid details are they allowed to proceed.

What are Graphical Web Site Statistics?

Your web hosting company should be able to automatically log visitors to your web site. If they can, they should be able to provide you with detailed statistics in a graphical format. You should be able to see statistics such as, the amount of people that are visiting, what countries they are coming from, what search engines are sending people to your site, and lots, lots more.

What is FTP?

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Its the method used to transfer files from one computer to another.

What is a Web Control Panel (WCP)?

A WCP, is a service that should be provided by your hosting company, and enables you to manage your hosting package form the web. You should be able to set up features such as email forwarding, additional users, set up mailing lists and auto-responders, as well as doing backups and a range of other features.

What is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth can be described or measured in two ways. The first is speed or capacity, and is the amount of data, that can be uploaded or downloaded a telephone line or network cable in a given amount of time. For instance, if you have a 64K line, then 64,000 bits of information can be passed down this cable every second. If on the other hand, you have a 2Mb line, then 2,000,000 bits of information can be passed down this cable every second. So, obviously the 2Mb line is faster. The second, which is more relevant when you are buying hosting, is the amount of bandwidth that your web hosting company allocates you in a given period, often monthly. This is the amount of data that is allowed to pass to or from your web space in a monthly period, measured in Megabytes or Gigabytes.

What is SendMail and SMTP?

These are programs used by your web site hosting company to send you emails.

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