Introduction To Hosting

We have created this guide to help you avoid the stress associated with choosing your new website hosting company. We have been involved in the Internet industry since 1992, and over the years have heard many horror stories which we do not want you to go through. We have therefore created this simple guide to Web hosting so that you know what you need to get your site online with as little fuss as possible!

If you can't find the answers to your questions here then why not check out our FAQs page .

General Questions

• What is a domain name?
  A domain name is a unique name that is registered to you, and only you are allowed to have a web site and receive emails in this name. Domain names are paid for and registered for you by web hosting and domain name registration companies. Domain names are allocated to you for a certain period of time from 1 - 10 years, and after this period they are renewable. If you want to keep the name then you must pay a renewal fee.
• What is a web hosting company?
  A web hosting company, provides you with all the services you need to publish and maintain a web site on the Internet. A basic service should provide you with web space to store your site, a domain name (such as yourname.co.uk) and email facilities.
• What is a web server?
  A web server is a computer that is permanently connected to the Internet. One of the uses of these servers is to host your web site.
• What is an IP address?
  IP addresses are numbers such as 272.255.193.177, that are allocated to computers. They are very similar to your house or flat number, in that the postman knows where to deliver your mail, computers can deliver information to other computers depending on the unique IP address.
• What is a browser?
  A browser is a piece of software that enables us to browse the World Wide Web. Examples of browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator.
• What is a domain name server?
  Most people are not able to remember large amounts of IP addresses, but we can remember domain names. However, computers cannot read domain names. A domain name server (DNS) changes the domain name, that we enter in our browsers, into an IP address and then forwards us to the web server that hosts that web site.
  
  Domain Name Registration Questions

• What is a domain name?
  A domain name is a unique name that is registered to you, and only you are allowed to have a web site and receive emails in this name. Domain names are paid for and registered for you, by web hosting and domain name registration companies. Domain names are allocated to you for a certain period of time from 1 - 10 years, and after this period they are renewable. If you want to keep the name then you must pay a renewal fee. Examples of domain names are Clicknhost.co.uk and clicknhost.me.uk.
• What is web forwarding?
  If a site or domain name has web forwarding set up, then visitors will be automatically redirected to another web site. This is useful if you want to have a domain name, that you own, redirected to another web site, without the visitor having to do anything.
• What is email forwarding?
  Email forwarding will redirect email for a specific domain name to your ISP account. This is useful if you have multiple domain names and you only want to set up one ISP account in your email software, such as Microsoft's Outlook Express.
• What is Domain Parking?
  Parking is where your domain name registration company will store (or park) your domain name for you, until you have decided what to do with it.
• What are Naming Authority Fees?
  Through out the world you have various naming authorities. These companies are responsible for the managing of the domain names that are registered in that country. In the UK, Nominet is the naming authority and they charge a fee for each domain name that is registered.
• What are transfer fees?
  If you want to transfer your domain name from one hosting company to another, then either company may charge you a fee to do so. We do not charge you to transfer your domain away from us.

Web Site Hosting Questions

• Whats the diffrerence between Windows and Linux?
  If you are new to hosting and are wanting to upload html files it dosen't matter if you choose Windows or Linux. However if you are wanting to use more advanced features it will make a big difference. For more information click here .
• What is a POP3 Mailbox?
  A POP3 mailbox is similar to your letterbox at home. It is a specific area on your hosting company's server, that stores the email that you receive.
• What is an email alias?
  An email alias is the part of your email address before the @ sign. i.e. info, sales, webmaster, john, peter etc.
• What is a catchall email alias?
  This is where any email received, with any email alias, is stored in one POP3 mailbox. This saves having to set up multiple POP3 mailboxes for different aliases.
• What are auto-responders?
  An auto-responder is a system that will automatically reply to people that have sent you emails, with a preformated email message. For instance, if you are away on holiday, you could set up an auto-responder that tells people that you are away, and that you will deal with their email when you return.
• What is web space?
  Web space is where your web site is stored. It is an allocated amount of hard drive space (i.e. 50Mb), on your hosting company's web server.
• What is a cgi-bin?
  A cgi-bin is a directory on your web space, where you can store and execute CGI scripts.
• What are Perl, C++, ASP, PHP and Java?
  These are all programming languages, that can be run on a web server. Programs or scripts written in these languages, can provide your web site with additional functionality and higher levels of dynamic content.
• What are Server Side Includes (SSI)?
  SSI are HTML tags that are inserted into HTML pages, and when this page is opened in someone's browser, these tags are executed. Some of there uses are to log statistics or run other programs, such as an advert banner rotation script.
• What are Frontpage Extensions?
  These are only necessary for users of Microsoft Frontpage. They are a set of programs that are loaded onto the web server, that enable you to publish your web site from within FrontPage and take advantage of all the web site features that are included within the software. These features include animation, site searching and forums.
• What is ODBC Conectivity?
  This allows you to connect various Microsoft aplications (Access, Excel etc) to your web pages. This is a standard feature of our Windows packages.
• What is mySQL?
  mySQL is a very fast and efficient database system and is normally used on a Linux platform.
• What is MS SQL?
  MS SQL is a very fast and efficient databse system and is normally used on a Windows platform.
  
• What is a Secure Socket Layer (SSL)?
  You may have noticed that when you visit some web sites, that the URL changes from http:// to https://, and a padlock appears in your browser. SSL is a system that enables you to obtain confidential information from visitors, in a safe and secure method. SSL encrypts any data that is entered and is therefore more difficult for potential hackers to intercept.
• What are Password Protected Directories?
  If you only want paid customers or site members, to enter a certain part of your web site, then you can password protect this area. When visitors try to enter this protected part of your web site, they are asked to enter a username and password, and only if they enter valid details are they allowed to proceed.
• What are Graphical Web Site Statistics?
  Your web hosting company should be able to automatically log visitors to your web site. If they can, they should be able to provide you with detailed statistics in a graphical format. You should be able to see statistics such as, the amount of people that are visiting, what countries they are coming from, what search engines are sending people to your site, and lots, lots more. We provide Matrix statistic as an extra feature. Matrix statistics are well known for being the market leader and provide you with graphs etc to analise your traffic.
• What is FTP?
  FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Its the method used to transfer files from one computer to another.
• What is a Web Control Panel (WCP)?
  A WCP, is a service that should be provided by your hosting company, and enables you to manage your hosting package form the web. You should be able to set up features such as email forwarding, additional users, set up and auto-responders, as well as doing a range of other things.
• What is Bandwidth?
  Bandwidth is described as the speed or capacity, and is the amount of data, that can be uploaded or downloaded a telephone line or network cable in a given amount of time. For instance, if you have a 64K line, then 64,000 bits of information can be passed down this cable every second. If on the other hand, you have a 2Mb line, then 2,000,000 bits of information can be passed down this cable every second. So, obviously the 2Mb line is faster.
• What is SendMail and SMTP?
  These are programs used by your web site hosting company to send you email