You must have heard these terms but may not be aware of what these mean. Below are the 20 most commonly used terms in the hosting industry
Bandwidth/Traffic
The amount of data that can be transferred to and from the website to a server. The more the bandwidth, the more traffic your website can handle. However, beware of the term “unlimited bandwidth” used by a host: There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.
RAM/Memory
RAM (Random Access Memory) is the amount of memory you get on your server. The more RAM on a server, the faster the data can be processed by CPU. The units of measurement in which RAM is available are Megabytes and Gigabytes.
Domains
Domains give a website its unique web address. When you are starting a new website, you have to think of a unique, easy to remember and relevant name for your site. When choosing a name for your site, keep your target audience and business model in mind. Most webhosts offer domain registration when you signup with them for a hosting account.
SubDomain
Subdomains are third-level domains mainly used to organize your website. For example, In this url:
http://blog.mysite.com, blog is a third level domain.
Parked Domain
Parked domains are additional domain names that you host on your account. Parked domains are normally used by businesses that wish to have more than one domain for advertising purposes. The information displayed on both the domain names is mostly the same.
Name Servers
A name server is a server that translates a website domain name into its equivalent IP address.
Control Panel
A server control panel gives the website owners a quick and easy way to manage and control their server. The most common and popular control panel widely available is the cPanel control panel.
Backups
Data is extremely crucial for any business, and no one wants to loose their data. Hosting companies regularly backup the data as a precaution in case of any catastrophe. Hosting companies offer to back data up on a monthly, weekly, nightly, and hourly basis. The more frequently you backup your data, the more you pay.
Server Uptime Downtime
means how many hours your website will be up. Hosting companies try to offer up to 99.99% server uptime. Below is a breakdown of server downtime percentage wise:
– 99.671% means annual downtime of 28.8 hrs
– 99.7% means annual downtime of 22 hrs
– 99.98% means annual downtime of 1.6 hrs
CDN
CDN means Content Delivery Network, which is a network of distributed servers across the globe. CDN allows for your website to be cached throughout world-wide secure data centers, allowing your website and videos to stream up to 5 times as fast without the need to host physical servers in multiple different locations.
Shared Hosting
In shared hosting, webhosts stuff a server with multiple websites. Shared hosting is very cheap, normally starts at around $5/month. In shared hosting, your website is hosted on a server with hundreds of other websites and you share disk space, RAM, and bandwidth with all. Shared web hosting is good for small websites and blogs.
VPS
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. A dedicated server is broken down to have small servers within itself called containers or VPS. Each VPS then acts like a small dedicated server. VPS hosting is good for medium-size websites built using CMS, shopping carts, etc., and for those that want the power and control of dedicated server but at a lower price.
Dedicated Servers
With a dedicated server, you get a complete server to host your website. You will not be sharing the server or the resources with any one else. You have the full server and its resources for your use only.
Self-Managed Servers
In self-managed severs, you pay the hosting companies a monthly fee for just renting the server. The responsibility of the server management is all on you. Self-managed servers are cheaper because you only pay for the servers. Self-managed servers are good for systems administrators, applications and software developers.
Fully-Managed Servers Fully-managed servers mean that the hosting company is responsible for complete server management. In fully-managed servers, the hosting company does the following:
– Server Management
– Server Monitoring
– Backups
– Managed Database and Storage
– Security Updates and Scans
– Application Updates
and much more
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting means your website is not just hosted on one server, but distributed across a variety of servers. This means that if one server goes down, the other one picks up and keeps your website up and running. Also, with the benefit of the cloud you get on-demand resources as well as the option to scale your resources up and down based on your needs.
SaaS
SaaS stands for Software as a Service which means that the software provider hosts the software instead of providing licenses to the software, and it is normally made available to customers over the Internet for a monthly fee.
SSL
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and is a security technology used to establish an encrypted link between the web server and the browser. With SSL, information such as credit card details, SSN numbers, etc. can be transmitted in an encrypted and secure manner.
PCI DSS
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that all companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. In order to do so, the server on which the merchant’s website is hosted should be PCI compliant.
SLA
Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a formal written agreement made between the webhost and its customers. The SLA lists all the rules, agreement terms, service details, refund policies, etc.
