GlowHost Glossary
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Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver »
Dreamweaver is a popular HTML editor used by beginners and web development professionals alike. Dreamweaver has a built in FTP utility to get files from point A to point B. FTP is the web standard for publishing so Dreamweaver makes it extremely easy to publish your website because of the vast support for the FTP protocol.
Backups - Instant, Nightly or Weekly »
Instant backups are simply a RAID setup where your site is constantly mirrored to another disk. in the event the primary disk fails the server will continue to run of the secondary hard disk, and the original hard disk can be replaced without experiencing downtime. The problem with instant backups is there is not a nightly or weekly snapshot available if you decide you need to roll your site back to an earlier date. For example if you accidentally delete your website, the instant backup also contains a deleted website.
Nightly backup is a physical snapshot of your website, databases, email accounts etc. As the name implies they are made nightly and stored on a different physical disk or remote location. Nightly backups provide the ability to roll your site back or retrieve data that was inadvertently lost.
Weekly backups are similar in nature to nightly backups, the difference as the name implies is it is an older snapshot or archive of your website. Especially useful in situations when the nightly backup contains corrupted data and an older archive is needed.
CGI-BIN »
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface which is a server-side communication standard for allowing scripts to connect to applications internal to the server. For example, a PERL script that needs to connect to a MySQL database and display the output to a web browser. Without the cgi-bin acting as a gateway to the MySQL server, your web browser, you would not be able to produce dynamic web pages.
Dedicated IP Address »
A dedicated IP Address allows you to isolate yourself from other sites on the same server by assigning your site a unique, non-shared IP address. Most sites in shared hosting will share a common IP address. Dedicated IP addresses can be used for many things but the most common use is for provisioning of a private SSL certificate to be installed on a domain.
Domain Parking »
Domain parking simply put, is point domain "B" to domain "A." For example, lets say you were the owner of GlowHost.com. Your main hosting account is called glowhost.com. You might want to park glowhost.net and glowhost.org on top of the glowhost.com account to direct additional traffic to your main web site.
Flash /Shockwave »
Flash and Shockwave are two popular technologies for delivering eye-catching animated graphics that typically take a fraction of the time to download due to smaller file sizes and streaming capabilities built right into the Flash and Shockwave files. Compared to their counterparts on the web like MPEG it has become a popular choice for delivering faster page loading times for users on slower connections. An example of a flash movie is the animation found on our homepage. If you click "view presentation" you will be in for some real eye-candy.
FTP - File Transfer Protocol »
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. In Layman's terms, this is the dialogue used for file transfer from computer to computer across the web. In this application, it would be used for getting your website files from your local computer, to our web server. FTP makes it possible to transfer files between different computers running different operating systems, This is how it is possible to publish HTML pages built on a Windows machine on a Linux server.
IMAP Email »
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. Similar to POP3 with the added benefit that it allows users to synchronize multiple computes like a PDA, Desktop and Laptop. This is possible because the email is permanently stored on the server side until explicitly "told" to be deleted. POP3 acts opposite in the fact that when you connect for the first time and retrieve your email, it is downloaded and immediately removed from the server.
IMAP is more server intensive than POP3 and that is why many "fast food" style web hosts do not offer it because the more people they can pack on a machine the better. IMAP would limit their maximum number of sites per server so many choose not to offer this.
IonCube Loader »
Similar to the Zend optimizer, IonCube loader will allow you to run IonCube encrypted PHP files on your web site. you can install the IonCube Loader in your local web site and run IonCube encrypted files.
Microsoft Frontpage »
Frontpage is a popular HTML editor among beginners to web design because of its low initial cost and popular brand name. This software requires the web host run special server-side software so that the program can publish the web pages produced in Frontpage. This is an added, unnecessary step for getting pages from point A to point B, and introduces a potential failure point in the publishing process.
PERL »
PERL stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. PERL is one of the most common programming languages used to access CGI programs. PERL scripts can be embedded in HTML pages to deliver dynamic page content to the client browser that is requesting the information.
Password Protected Directories »
Password protected directories allow you to hide your content from the general public, and search engine robots and spiders. Simply make a folder on the server and user the password protect option. You can allow unlimited usernames and passwords to this directory so that you can allow access to "members only" content or you can simply have one common login for everybody.
PHP and MySQL »
PHP is possibly the most popular programming language in the world at this time. It is extremely popular because of its relative easy in learning as compared to other high-level programming languages. Most programming languages exist to assist in maintaining and manipulating database information. For example, your customer contact information, or your available products might be stored in a database. With PHP you can develop or use pre-existing scripts to manipulate that data. A very simple example application would be to list all customers that live in Death Valley, California.
MySQL is the database aspect of this equation and is also extremely popular because of its high performance factor and price compared to other closed-source database applications.
PHP coupled with MySQL allows for maximum performance and efficiency at a fraction of the cost of closed-source or privately licensed alternatives.
phpMyAdmin »
phpMyAdmin is a PHP front-end for manipulating MySQL database information. This program has been used for many years and is a favorite in the web developer community. This is a browser-based alternative to programs which you may have already used in the past like MySQL Front, MySQL Maestro and Navicat. With our web hosting solution you no longer need to install any of these programs on your local machine or on the web. We install it for you and it is available the second that you have access to your new control panel.
POP3 Email »
POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol 3. It is one of the most widely used delivery methods for email access the internet in use today, and is supported by virtually every email reader software on the planet such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird and other popular readers.
Pre-Installed Forums »
See Pre-installed scripts for a detailed explanation of what 'Pre-installed" really means. Our pre-installed forums include the most popular open source forums at the time of your installation. Currently available forum options include YaBB and others like PHPBB and can be found on our Fantastico web hosting information pages.
NEW! Order a Professional or Advanced Five Star Annual hosting plan and get absolutely free, a full version free license for vBulletin forums and professional installation services for your domain. That is a $300 value for absolutely no additional charge. We will automatically renew your vBulletin license for the life of your website.
Pre-Installed Scripts »
Pre-Installed scripts are not really "installed" on your site immediately. This is the term the web community adopted and is a bit misleading. Pre-installed scripts are pre-installed on the server, ready for installation by you. It is a very simple process that allows you to pick and choose what you want, leaving what you do not want off of your site and out of the way. Our automated installer software will handle the difficult steps for you. the hardest part for you is deciding which script to install!
Raw Logs »
Raw logs are plain old boring server access logs. Some programmers like to use these logs to write things that are not so boring. In technical jargon, a not-so-boring thing would be called a log analyzer. In Layman's terms an example log analyzer would be AW STATS or any of the other web stats programs that we already provide for you. Some site owners like more, customized information, and that is why we provide full raw log access.
Shopping Carts »
Shopping carts are special programs that run on your website that allow you to add products, descriptions and prices as well as other details from a web based administrative interface. You can use one of the many free shopping carts that we offer including Zen Cart, OS Commerce, Agora or you can install any third party shopping cart that you have licensed for your domain. All of our free shopping cart scripts support popular payment gateways such as PayPal and are also compatible with a true e-commerce merchant account so you can accept Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover and more. Learn more about our low fee merchant account partnership with e-onlinedata and Authorize.net
SMTP Server »
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is used to transfer email across the Internet in between mail servers. Once two mail servers have communicated and transferred email using SMTP, then users can download this email using the POP3 or IMAP protocols. This is why you typically need to configure an inbound (POP/IMAP) and outbound (SMTP) server in your mail program,
Streaming Support »
The most widely used form of streaming is defined here as to begin playing a multimedia file before it has completed downloading to the client's computer. This allows site visitors to get access to the content you want to deliver to them without them having to wait for the entire file to download. other streaming uses can be applied for shoutcasting, podcasting, and live video feeds.
Subdomains »
Subdomains are a prefix to an existing Fully Qualified Domain Name also known as FQDN. A FQDN in Layman's terms is simply something like glowhost.com. So if glowhost.com is a FQDN then a prefix to this FQDN would look like prefix.glowhost.com. Real life usages on some sites would be like support.domain.com, billing.domain.com, blog.domain.com, etc. You can allow se prate FTP access to subdomains to allow different users to develop different parts of your site, if needed.
