WIPL Knowledgebase Articles

Web Hosting Jargon

For Example It2ecom.net Plan of $19.95/mo as of 6/3/00 is presented below with what comes with the plan and then each area of the plan is explained...

Monthly Fee: $19.99 (if paid annually) or $24.95 (if paid monthly)

• This means that your monthly payments will amount to $19.99/mo if you pay annually. It is more if you pay on a monthly basis. You can save a chunk of money by paying annually. Many hosting companies are now using these types of payment plans.

Setup Fee: $50.00

• This is the fee web hosting companies charge for setting up your account and domain. Basically, it is a labor fee for the transfer or setup of your new account with them. Some companies do not have setup fees, but they make up for this in other areas, such as raising their monthly rates or by offering less features in a given plan.

Disk Storage: 125 MB

• Disk storage is the space on the web hosting company's servers (or computers) that your web site's content is allowed to utilize. For example, on the computer you are using now, it has a certain amount of disk space on its hard drive. It may be anywhere from 3000 MB to 6000 MB (or 3G to 6G). One of your programs on that computer may take up 15 MB of storage space on your C drive. Web hosting companies' servers work the same way. They allow each of their customers a certain amount of disk space to store their web site material on, such as images, HTML files, emails, etc. 125 MB is a very large amount of space for a web site. Most web sites only take up 3 - 10 MB, if that. But you will want to have sufficient storage space in the event that you need it, so it never hurts to have more than enough.

Data Transfer or Bandwidth: Unlimited

• This is the amount of data that your web hosting company's server has to load each time someone visits your site, and/or each time you upload images or files via FTP (File Transfer Protocal). For example, every time someone visits Amazon.com, the servers that host Amazon.com have to load those pages for each of those persons visiting the page. It is actually the 'transfer' of the data that you see in front of you. Most web hosting companies offer unlimited data transfer because 97% of their clients do not abuse their servers with outrageous data transfers anyway. But most of the sites that offer unlimited data transfer also have rules in place that prevent customers from abusing their system. You must read the fine print in every *unlimited* plan that you encounter to make sure you do not break their rules.

FTP Accounts (with 24hr FTP access): 25

• An FTP Account allows you to upload your web site and content onto your web hosting company's servers so that visitors can see your site. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol which basically means that files are being transferred over the Internet. There are many free programs out there that allow you to do this with ease, such as WS_FTP and the Microsoft Web Wizard which comes with just about every Windows 98 computer. The 24 hour FTP access means that you can upload files and/or images to your web site at anytime of the day or night.

Up-time: 99.9%

• Up-time is the amount of time that a web site remains live or active and without problems loading pages, etc. A 99.9% up-time means that there is a .1% chance that your site will go "down" in the event that something happens to the server your site is sitting on or something happens to the connection along the way. A 99.9% up-time is just about as good as it gets in web hosting, which isn't bad at all. You should never settle for anything less than a 99.9% up-time, even it it's 99.7% or 99.8%. All companies should be equipped with the tools needed to keep your site up and running at least 99.9% of the time.

POP3 E-mail Boxes: 25

• POP3 Email Boxes are the 'actual' email accounts that you receive with your plan. 25 different people within your organization or company can have their own email accounts with their own logins.

E-mail Autoresponders: Unlimited

• These are the messages that you create that will automatically be mailed back to those that email you by addressing a particular address on your site. For instance, your site may have a help email address listed on the site for those that need help with the site or that have a question. The address will be on the site as support@yourcompany.com. You can set up a message that is automatically sent to those that send email to that email address to let them know their email was received. It could say something like this: "Thank you for contacting 'Your Company.' A member of our support team will reply to you as soon as possible."

E-Mail Aliases: Unlimited

• E-mail aliases are just the words that you place in front of @yourcompany.com to create unique email addresses. These aliases are then set up by you to forward to whatever address you want them to forward to. For example, you can set up an alias at your site called sales@yourcompany.com (if you do not have an actual email account under this name). Then you could set up this alias to forward to 2 or 3 people in your sales department with real POP3 email accounts. You can put any word you want in front of your company to be an alias. The servers are set up to send all email that ends in @yourcompany.com to your main default Pop3 email account regardless of what that word is. Even if you do not set up an alias to be forwarded to specific addresses in your organization, the email will by default go to the 'main' email account of your web site's plan. Note: Aliases are NOT actual email accounts, they are only addresses that point an email to an actual email account or accounts.

MS FrontPage Support: Yes

• MS FrontPage is a program that many companies use to publish their web site. If you use MS FrontPage to publish your web site, you need to go with a web hosting company that supports MS FrontPage.

Detailed Web Statistics : Yes

• Every web site should have access to their site's traffic and visitor statistics. This is very important in monitoring the success of your web site. With web site statistics, you can see how many people visit your site per day, month, or by the hour. You can see where these visitors are coming from and what web sites or search engines are referring them. You can see what pages are the most popular pages within your site, and so much more. No web site should be without statistics. This is also valuable information to those that inquire about advertising on your site.

CGI Bin (Local Directory): Yes

• CGI Bins are used to hold any scripts that run on your web site, such as the scripts needed to run interactive pages such as message boards, guest books, or email forms. The local directory means that you will have your own directory for your scripts and not a shared directory.

Web Control Panel: Yes

• The web control panel allows you to control your web site functions, such as setting up email aliases and auto responders, creating new email accounts, viewing your disk storage, or reviewing your billing statements, and much, much more. You sign into these Web Control Panels with your user ID and password.