Web Hosting Glossary

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Web Hosting
This is the service whereby the infrastructure and connectivity necessary for a website to be available on the internet is leased to customers by a hosting company.

Web Hosting Control Panel
A web interface that enables the management and control of one’s web hosting account. These control panels have become an indispensable tool for hosting customers, and are now offered by the vast majority of web hosts.

Weblog
Also known informally as a “blog,” this is a kind of website or component within a website whereby an individual may post journal entries which are then viewable by visitors to the site, ordered from the most recent to the eldest entries.

Webmaster
This is an individual who builds, publishes, maintains, and updates websites. Webmasters can be thought of as website administrators, as opposed to network and systems administrators, who handle the infrastructure behind the website. Webmasters do not necessarily handle all of the processes involved in the creation and maintenance of a website, and may act more along the lines of a manager than a developer or designer.

Web Mail
This is a manner of accessing your POP mail by way of a web-based interface. This is commonly used to access mail when not at a computer setup to retrieve their email through an email client.

Web Server
This is a server which is setup to serve documents, usually built in HTML or server side scripting languages, over HTTP connections. This may refer either to the machine itself, or to the web server software, such as IIS or Apache, that is running on the machine for this purpose.

Web Site
This is a structured collection of documents and associated files which contain everything necessary to instruct a web browser on how to render a site and what content it contains. These are usually written in HTML, but commonly also use CSS, scripts, Flash, and other components that expand the capabilities of the site beyond that provided by HTML alone. Web sites are hosted with web hosts on web servers, usually housed in a data center.

Windows Hosting
Web hosting that is based on IIS, operating atop a Microsoft Windows operating system, usually Windows NT or Advanced Server. Windows hosting is necessary for the functionality of ASP-based websites, and usually Cold Fusion-based sites as well. Windows hosting is generally more expensive than UNIX-based hosting on account of licensing costs associated with Windows.