The Language of Hosting Debunked.

The terminology used in the hosting industry can be very different to anything you have come across before, particularly if you are setting up your own website for the very first time.

To help you overcome some of the seemingly endless technobabble, we would like to offer some definitions of some of the common issues you will end up discussing when you look to establish a name for your site and find somewhere to keep it.

Domain names: A domain name is the public name of your site; the URL that you will advertise or tell or all your friends!Shared web hosting: Where many different sites are hosted on a single server.  The sites share the resources (and costs) of the server, making it a very cost effective solution for smaller sites that just do not need a dedicated server.

Microsoft FrontPage: A very popular and well-supported HTML editor for creating and maintaining sites.Uptime: The amount of time your website is actually “up” - on and accessible to users.

Downtime is normally caused by technical problems on the host’s end, so you need to look for a hosting provider who can offer you the highest uptime possible.

Uptime is normally expressed as a percentage of time - i.e.  Uptime of 99% suggests the site is not accessible for 1% of the time.  Does not sound like much?

Well, it does when you realise that it’s equivalent to being out of action for over 1.5 hours every week!FTP: File Transfer Protocol, a simple and easy way to transfer files over the internet, often used by web hosting services to receive your site files. Now when you talk to a hosting provider about your hosting service, hopefully you will understand everything they say!