Glossary of Terms

Audio/Video HTTP Streaming

Your server supports HTTP streaming for audio and video. It has the correct MIME types installed, and the configuration changes to Apache have been made to allow for streaming support.

Bandwidth/Data Transfer

Any out-bound or in-bound traffic from your Web site is considered data transfer. Each file on your Web site has a size in bytes. Each web page consists of one file that may refer to many files, like the bullets, lines and other graphics, images, sounds, animations and video. Every time that Web page is requested, all of those files are sent by our server to the requesting computer as requested by the Web browser on that computer as requested by the operator of that Web browser. Also, FTP and other traffic related to your account is metered and counts against your bandwidth limit.

DNS

The acronym for Domain Name Server, which is a computer that is aware of the physical location of your Internet domain. The primary DNS is often also the computer that hosts your domain and the files on your Web site. The secondary DNS is a computer that notifies those looking for your domain by way of its domain name that the Web site to which they refer exists, but is unavailable if the primary DNS computer is not operating or is too busy to respond the the request.

Domain

Your space in the Internet.

Domain Name

The name of your space.

Domain Server

The computer that hosts your space on its hard drive where your Web site files reside, and that directs inquires for your domain name to that space on its hard drive. This computer usually has a high speed (10 MB/sec) connection to the Internet.

Domain Name Registrar

One of many businesses authorized to provide the domain name services once monopolized by Network Solutions.

Domain Name Services (DNS)

The maintenance of the name and address of your space, and related contact information on a computer that makes that information available to the Internet such that inquires of your domain name are forwarded to your domain server, and inquires about the ownership of your domain name are satisfied.

An email address that gives you the ability to receive any email at any@yourdomain.com, such as support@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com. The disadvantage is that each of these email addresses will attract unwanted email. Mail to any email address can be automatically forwarded to another email address.

Email Forwarding

Allows you to route all email coming to one address on your domain and send it to another address outside your domain. For example, you all email sent to support@yourdomain.com forwarded to another account such as myname@yahoo.com. The advantage is that you need only access one email account to get all of your email. The disadvantage is that you will have difficulty decerning the origin or intent of the email.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)

Character sequences, e.g. <P>text</P> that tell a browser what to do with "text", e.g. a paragraph, or what it references using a Uniform Reference Locator (URL), which may use its HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) command to access a different location in the same file, access a file on the same computer, or access a file on another computer somewhere on the Internet.

IP Address

The Internat Protocol Accress is the actual address of your domain server.

Perl, Python, C/C++, J2SDK

These types of scripting languages are installed your server. Every effort is made to ensure the latest version is installed. Please email support@selectnet.net for current version numbers.

PHP

One of the most powerful development tools on the Internet, PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language used by developers around the world. We support PHP 4.

Password-Protected Directories

Allows you to protect your web pages with password and user ID combinations that you establish. When someone tries to access a web page within the password protected directory, they will be prompted for a username and password. If they authenticate, they can view your pages within that directory.

Pine, vi, Pico, .htaccess

All these utilities are included within your UNIX shell. 'Pine' is a more advanced email client within Telnet then standard 'Mail'. 'VI' and 'PICO' are text editors that let you create and edit files within Telnet. '.htaccess' lets you set up password protected directories within your web site.

Shockwave and Flash Support

Shockwave and Flash Web sites are supported. Shockwave is the Micromedia software used for developing interactive animationss. Flash is the Micromedia software used for developing animationss. Both have companion players that users must download and install on their computers in order to view any Sockwave content on your Web site.

SMTP

This (outgoing) mail server server routes outgoing and incoming email. Sendmail is an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) mail server that routes SMTP email messages through the Internet to be stored on a mail server, such as POP3 or IMAP. SMTP is the most common email protocol on the Internet. Sendmail also allows you to manage some email features, such as email aliases, autoresponder, and spam filters.

Spam

Spam is any unsolicited email message. Through our Control Panel, you can control spam by creating a spam filter to block specific email originating from outside the server. This powerful feature is a great way to reduce Spam from hitting your personal or business addresses. This is also useful when you just want to block unwanted users from emailing you. For instance, you may block an email address, domain name, or IP address.

SpamCop and ordb.org (Open Relay Database) Filtering

We use popular spam filters on all shared servers to help reduce the amount of Spam our users receive, like SpamCop and ordb.org, which is the Open Relay Database to help in our prevention of Spam. ordb.org is a non-profit organization which stores IP-addresses of verified open SMTP relays. These relays are, or are likely to be, used as conduits for sending unsolicited bulk email, also known as Spam. By using our hosting service, you understand and approve of such filtering. You understand that any person attempting to email you from a server in the Open Relay Database will be returned to the sender. If you do not want your service subject to such filtering, then you understand you are free to host your site elsewhere.

SSL

SSL is the acronym for Secure Socket Layers, which allow your server programs to encrypt confidential information such as credit card numbers, so it is impossible to intercept a transmission. SSL will light up the key in your customer's browser, telling your users it is safe to place confidential information into your forms.

Wildcard email Address

A "Wildcard email Address" is used to receive ALL emails not going to an assigned address on the server. Typically these are emails that someone might have misspelled, however the domain name must be spelled correctly.