Web Hosting Terminology: Some Definitions
If you are looking for a web hosting company and are pretty new to the internet game, we can help you understand some of the terminology that you are seeing on these hosting sites. Being a webmaster and having hosting is a lot to take in but once you understand the terms, things become easier to understand. Here are four main terms that you should know.
Server Type: There are many different types of servers involved in web hosting. The type of server software that the server is running can be Windows, Linux, or sometimes Unix . For those who have a basic website or webpage the server type is no problem for you. But if you have hundreds of pages on your site then you will need more data base functions and more dynamic pages. Most people tend to stick with Linux as it has full support for PHP, the most common dynamic scripting language on the internet. Most of the popular applications you would want to use, such as the Wordpress blogging platform, run on PHP. Thus, you would need a Linux powered server.
Disk Space: This is the amount of space that is available to you on your server. You store the information from the website on the server hard drive. If you don’t plan on hosting large files such as mp3s or videos, disk space shouldn’t matter for you. Just stay away from hosts that offer “unlimited” disk space! They are lying.
Bandwidth: The value you see for bandwidth in a hosting plan is for a monthly basis. Bandwidth is a unit of measure based on how many megabytes (or gigabytes) are downloaded from your website. When someone visits your site, their computer must download all of the .HTML files and images associated with the website. The magnitude of this download is what is known as the bandwidth. For most people, .HTML files takes up very little bandwidth. You only need lots of bandwidth if you are a very high traffic site or are hosting large files for download (50 mb+).
Email Accounts: Certain hosting plans only allow a certain amount of email accounts to be placed on the server. If you need more, some companies will offer more for an additional price.
These are just 4 key terms that you need to understand. There are so many more aspects to web hosting, but by understanding the basics, the rest will flow much more easily.
