Brief glossary of terminology

If you are new to web hosting or the internet in general, here are a FEW of the terms you may want to learn.

• ISP - (Internet Service Provider) provides connectivity to the Internet, usually via modem and dialup lines (we DO NOT provide ISP services)
• IPP - (Internet Presence Provider) provides presences on the Internet, usually provides web hosting and e-mail services (this is what we do)
• WWW - (World Wide Web) refers to the vast web sites and such that span the Internet
• POP - (Post Office Protocol) physical e-mail accounts you log into with a username

and password to pick up any e-mail sent/forwarded to that account
• Email Alias - aliasing allows you to have multiple e-mail addresses sent to a specific

POP e-mail account (ie. pick up webmaster@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com, etc. from
one POP account rather than from several separate ones
• Email Forward - forwarding allows you to have e-mail forwarded from a specific address or POP account to another POP account (ie. have all e-mail sent to webmaster@yourdomain.com

sent to your POP account provided by your ISP)
• FTP - (File Transfer Protocol) this is how you will upload and download your web pages

etc. to and from your computer to and from your virtual server
• ASCII - used in FTP and the WWW, this is a type of file, usually any kind of file

that you can read (like a text file) falls under this classification (HTML files
should be ASCII files)
• BINARY - used in FTP and the WWW, this is a type of file, usually any kind of file

that is unreadable as text falls under this classification (graphic images, sound
files, etc. should be BINARY files)
• HTML - (Hyper-Text Markup Language) the name of the standard coding used to create

web pages, most web pages are written/coded in HTML
• Domain - this is the convention used to access a web site (www.whatever.com , etc.)

Domain names must be registered with InterNIC to be valid and usable on the internet
• Non-domain - this is usually a sub-site on someone's domain (www.whatever.com/subsite)

Non-domains do not have to be registered with InterNIC
• InterNIC - the regulatory agency that handles the assignment and database tracking of

active/inactive/available domain names. Each country has their own NIC registry service
for handling foreign (or domestic) domain names.
• Propogation - a period after a domain name is registered or transferred when the domain name

is updated amoung all the nameservers found on the Internet around the world. This period
usually lasts 3-7 days and may result in visitors not being able to visit the domain name
until the period is over.

The list could go on and on, but these are some of the standard terms that you may find yourself using when dealing with web hosting. We may expand the listing with other terminologies, if needed. Otherwise, we recommend perusing through the internet for some online resources that can help you with the terminologies, if you are not familiar with them.