Glossary

bandwidth

commonly used to mean the same as "data traffic" (including on this site!), but this is technically a misnomer. See data traffic.

browser

a web browser is software designed primarily to read web pages and display them for the user (that's you). The most common browser in use today is Internet Explorer. Other (often better) browsers include Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera and Lynx.

catch-all

most web hosting accounts provide an email catch-all feature, which means that all email addressed to your domain will be received, even if there is no email account or forwarder for the specific address. For example you might usually receive email addressed to peter@yourdomain.com.au. With a catch-all, you will also receive any email addressed to pete@yourdomain.com.au or psmith@yourdomain.com.au or even abc123@yourdomain.com.au.

Historically this was useful for catching emails where the sender has mis-typed your email address, but these days it's generally advisable to disable the catch-all feature, due to the enormous amount of spam being sent.

data centre

a purpose-built faciliy to house many computers and related equipment securely - monitored 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and heavily guarded against environmental hazards and security breaches.

data traffic

the amount of data sent to and from your web site, measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). For hosting purposes, your account is allocated a monthly limit of data traffic or "bandwidth". When a visitor views your web site, the server sends each web page to them - including any related images and possibly file downloads (eg PDF files). The more visitors your site has, and the more images and large files are downloaded, the more data traffic your account will use.

disk space

Storage space on the web server. Each hosting account is allocated a quota of disk space, usually measured in megabytes (MB). A simple web site with only a few pages will easily fit into 20MB of space. If you have a large web site with many images, you will need more disk space. NOTE: large images on your site will not only use up more disk space, but will also use more bandwidth on your account (and frustrate your visitors with slow downloads). Storage of emails is also included in the disk quota.

domain name

a name that allows people to find your web site on the internet. For example microsoft.com is a domain name, and so is tweezyhosting.com.au. Notice there is no www at the front (www.microsoft.com is actually a sub-domain of the microsoft.com domain).

To establish a professional identity on the web, you should register a unique domain name that is similar to your business name. You can then use this name for your web site (www.mysmallbusiness.com.au) and email address (peter@mysmallbusiness.com.au). You can continue to use your domain name for as long as you pay for registering it (usually every 2 years).

This is important because using an email address based on your ISP's domain name (like mybusiness@littlepond.com) ties you into staying with that provider - your own domain name not only looks more professional, but you can keep the same email address if you change providers - and you are not giving an ISP free advertising.

dynamic web site

a web site that uses server-side scripting to deliver web pages to the visitor. Unlike static web pages, dynamic web pages often don't exist as files on the server until requested. The server then generates the HTML page (often with information from a database) and sends it to the visitor's browser; the web page may vary, depending for example on the time of day, who the visitor is, or what specific information they requested. Compare static web site

email account

see POP account

email address

an address in the form user@domain-name.com used for sending and receiving electronic mail. An email address can be a POP account where mail is stored on a server, or an email forwarder which just passes the mail to another email address. See also: catch-all

email forwarder

an "alias" for another email address, which allows you to have multiple identities. For example if you have a POP email account peter@mydomain.com.au you can also create a forwarder webmaster@mydomain.com.au. This means that any email sent to webmaster@mydomain.com.au will actually go to the peter@mydomain.com.au account. Forwarders allow you to have multiple email addresses, while you only need to check one account for new messages.

GB

abbreviation of gigabytes. A "byte" is a single character of text, and a gigabyte is approximately a thousand million (1,000,000,000) bytes.

hosting

web site hosting is a service that provides a place to store your web site, so that it's available to anyone in the world to visit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language; the coding syntax used to write web pages for the internet. It's designed to easily link web pages together so that visitors can jump from one web page to another.

internet

a global network connecting millions of computers. The largest part of the internet is the World Wide Web, but the internet also includes FTP sites, email and other services.

ISP

Internet Service Provider - a company that provides you with access to the internet. This is usually not the same company that provides hosting for your web site.

MB

abbreviation of megabytes. A "byte" is a single character of text, and a megabyte is approximately a million (1,000,000) bytes.

POP account

POP stands for Post Office Protocol. A POP account is where email is received and stored on the server until you pick it up with a client email program (eg Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora).

server

a computer that provides a service to other computers. There are many kinds of server, for example

• web server - delivers web pages
• mail server - provides email services
• file server - provides file storage space
• database server - provides database services

The generic term "server" can refer to a single computer that provides one or more of these services.

spam

unsolicited commercial email - the scourge of the internet. People who send spam ("spammers") usually send out thousands, or even millions of emails using automated software. They send to whatever email addreses they can find, and even invent addresses in the hope that a few of the millions sent will get through to someone. It is estimated that spam accounts for up to 90% of all emails.

static web site

a web site consisting of plain HTML files. A static web site looks the same on every visit, until the owner purposely makes changes to one or more of the web pages. Compare dynamic web site

virus

software written to deliberately do nasty things to your computer system

web page

a single web document, usually coded with HTML and stored on a web server. It can be requested from the server by a visitor's browser, which displays it for the visitor to view.

web site

a collection of (usually closely related) web pages. A web site for a very small business might consist of 3 web pages: one giving some general information about the business, another showing the products or services they provide and a third with contact details (address, phone numbers, etc).

web site hosting

see hosting