Are You Baffled By Hosting Terminology?

Posted by sbh-admin on 10 05 2017.

Following on from last month’s blog post about Email Terminology (linked at the bottom of this blog post), we’ve complied a list of hosting terminology that might come in handy too.

Web Server

A Web Server is the computer that your website is stored on. When visitors attempt to view your website through their web browser (such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, or Internet Explorer) the web server gives the browsers the files required to view your website.

Domain

A domain is essentially your address for your website. Domains often end in TLDs (Top Level Domains, see below for more info on this), such as .eu, .co.uk, .com, .net, or .org. An example of a domain would be smallbusiness.host.

Client Management Portal

The Client Management Portal is the portal through which you can manage your web hosting and email invoices and services.

Windows Control Panel or CPanel

The Windows Control Panel and CPanel are server control panels, you can use these to control the details about your website such as DNS records and email accounts and email passwords.

DNS 

DNS is essentially the phonebook of the internet. Your domain will have at least 2 nameservers (aka DNS servers) associated with it. When you load a website or send an email, your local DNS server (which is typically provided by your Internet Service Provider) will then ask our nameserver where to send emails or where to direct a website request.

TLD or Namespace

A TLD (top level domain) is the suffix that is at the end of a domain name, an example would be .co.uk.

Email Server

This is, in essence, the computer that your emails are sent to and stored on. When you receive an email, the email is transported from the sender’s computer, to their email server, and then to our email servers, and then to your device.