Gateway Marketing Online
Your Gateway to Online Marketing
Glossary:
Meanings of Commonly Used Internet Terms.
Glossary
Aliases: One thing that's very important to us is the ability to use different aliases with our domain name. For example, if your domain is ezineadauction.com, you may want to set up separate addresses to sort your mail like [email protected] or [email protected]. They may all funnel into the same mailbox, but you can set up filters at your end, making customer service much easier.
If you have a "wildcard" account, you can set up as many aliases as you like. If you have other employees who will need their own private box, check with us to see how many boxes we can allow.
Bandwidth: How much space they're willing to give you is important if you're going to compare apples to apples. You need to keep in mind the size of your site when deciding how much space you really need. 5-20 MB of storage is plenty for a small site. You must also consider that every time a visitor goes to a website, he or she downloads the images off of its host's server and onto a PC. This transfer causes data to be sent over the host's internet connection, which is only of a finite size. Too much data can cause the connection to become clogged. But figuring out your site's requirements is easy. If your homepage has two 5K images on it and receives 100 visitors, that means that each visitor would download 10K of information over the host's Internet connection or 10K x 100 or 1000K, which equals 1MB. One to two gigabytes of traffic is ample for 99 percent of the sites on the Internet. To better serve our customers, most of Gateway's servers have different specifications. Whenever a server approaches the minimum limit, another server is used. We are constantly upgrading the server selection to offer you more benefits. If more drive space, memory, or faster processors are needed, they are added in advance to minimize downtime. The average shared server ranges from PIII 1 G hrz, 1 G RAM to P4 2.4 Ghz, 2 G RAM. Many of our servers run spare hard drives for backup requirements. This is why Gateway allows you to expand as your site grows. Many of our hosts maintain software on their servers and on the switches to monitor individual website usage and server-wide usage. Bandwidth is billed per Megabyte (MB) over your monthly allocation, rounded up to the nearest Megabyte. You will receive your bandwidth overage billing, much like a well itemized cell phone bill, for the preceding month's usage. You may upgrade or downgrade your web hosting package at any time. You are required to pay the difference in the setup fee only if you upgrade. You will then pay the new monthly fee for the new account package that you select.
Browser: A software program that allows you to search for and display a web page - e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator.
CGI-BIN:
A very important component if you're planning on adding any sort of interactivity to your
site like forms, shopping carts, etc. Usually comes as standard equipment, but we have seen
some of the cheaper hosts leave it out entirely. You will also find sendmail and unlimited
access to be very useful.
Domain Name: An internet address - i.e. www.yournamehere.com.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.
FTP/TELNET Access: Even if you plan on using Frontpage to manage your site, you'll still need to have FTP access. It is usually standard, but it never hurts to ask. FTP is used to set file permissions and to upload your files to the web server. Telnet can be very useful for troubleshooting CGI scripts and changing server configurations. There are some servers that will not grant telnet access.
Home Page: Page through which a web site's visitors enter.
Hyperlinks: A link is a connection to either somewhere on the same page, another page on the same site, or a page somewhere else on the internet.
Meta-Tags: Keywords that help search engines index and rank your site.
Keys: Paired codes used to encrypt data in communication streams. One part of the key is kept private, while the other is transmitted to the web browser. Web browsers encrypt the data using the public portion of the key and the private portion is used for decrypting. The process is called public key encryption and is used in the SSL mechanism. A Digital Certificate is an encrypted electronic document that verifies the authenticity of a service provider or vendor of a product. Prices vary from $50 to $1000 per year. Installation of a key with a valid certificate is a prerequisite to SSL.
POP E-Mail (Post Office Protocol). These are email accounts that you can setup that carry your domain name. For example [email protected] or [email protected]. The average is 5 accounts. Some hosts now allow unlimited accounts. If your ISP is AOL you won't be able to access your pop accounts using Outlook Express, so be sure the web host provides a redirection service or control panel for managing your mail.
Search Engine: A program that is used to search for information on the internet (e.g. Google).
SMTP Mail
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is used for transferring mail between internet hosts. It is often used to upload mail directly from the client to an intermediate host and can only be used on systems that maintain a constant connection to the internet.
SSL: Secure Socket Layer, protects the communications between your internet site and web browsers from interception and eavesdropping. An encrypted link is established and sensitive information such as passwords and credit card information can be transferred back and forth. Evidence of activation can be use of the https: protocol in the URL, a blue color banner around the browser window or the unbroken key symbol at the bottom of the browser window. Use of SSL increases the rate of data transfer or bandwidth.
URL: Uniform Resource Locator. A term used for a web address, e.g. http://www.yourname.com
Web Host: The computer(s) that is directly connected to the internet. All files for websites on the internet are stored on host computers.
Web Page: A single document on the internet. Each web page has its own URL or web address.
Website: A compilation of web pages on the internet joined together by hyperlinks (more frequently referred to as "links").
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