Knowledgebase

Glossary from A to E

This is a dictionary of terms, phrases and concepts related to web hosting, web applications and the Internet as a whole.

The glossary is divided in four parts. In this one you'll find terms that start with the letters from A to E. The other parts are:

Add-on - when referring to web applications (e.g. WordPress, Magento, Joomla, etc.) for building and managing sites, an add-on is a piece of software that adds more options or functions to that application. Depending on the particular application, it's also referred to as a module, extension, plugin.

Admin panel - when used to describe web applications for building sites, an administration panel is the part of the web application from which the site is managed. It can be accessed with a username and a password. The admin panel is also referred to as the backend of the site, or sometimes as the dashboard.

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AJAX (stands for asynchronous JavaScript + XML) - this is a combination of different web-development technologies for creating web applications which can communicate with the server in the background, meaning that the data transfer between the client and the server does not affect how the page currently looks and is displayed. In other words, data can be exchanged between the application and the server without the need for the page that's currently displayed to be reloaded.

Android - an operating system (OS) for mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, etc.). It's open source and it's the most widely used OS for mobile devices. It has an interface with which actions are performed by directly touching the screen.

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Apache (short for Apache HTTP Server) - this is the most popular web server software. It's open source. Most web applications are designed to run on servers that use Apache. All HostKnox servers use Apache.

API (stands for Application Programming Interface) - refers to a set of procedures, routines, functions, etc. used for creating applications. It specifies how various tasks should be performed and how software components should interact with each other.

ASCII (stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange) - a common character-encoding system. It's used for encoding and representing text. The character set that this system supports is based on the English alphabet and includes the lowercase letters a to z, the upper case letters A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9, some punctuation and other symbols. It's one of the most widely used character-encoding schemes. Other common schemes are, for example, the ones that use Unicode (e.g. UTF-8, UTF-16).

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ASP (stands for Active Server Pages) - one of Microsoft's server-side technologies. It's not available on HostKnox servers.

ASP.NET - this is the successor of Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages).

ARP (stands for Address Resolution Protocol) - a network protocol used for converting IP addresses into MAC addresses. Each device that connects to the Internet is assigned an IP address with which it's identified. The MAC address is the serial number of the hardware device (e.g. LAN adapter) used by the computer to connect to the network; it's the physical address of the computer.

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Autoresponder - that's a program for automatically answering email messages. To each email that's received it sends a preconfigured message as a response.

All HostKnox customers can use the built-in autoresponder. It can be enabled and configured per mailbox/email address. This can be done from the Email section of the Pixie control panel. For more information on how to use it check out the tutorial on how to manage mailboxes with the Pixie control panel, and in particular the section on Autoresponder.

Avatar - an avatar is an image that represents a person in a forum, blog, etc. It's usually displayed below or next to the name of the user.

AWStats - this is a popular open source tool for analyzing server log files. Based on the logs it produces reports and statistics in the forms of tables and graphics that inform you about the visits on your site: how many visits there were for specified periods of time, when your site was visited, etc.

All HostKnox servers have AWStats installed. HostKnox customers can visit and view the AWStats reports for each of their accounts from the Pixie control panel.

Backdoor - refers to a way of gaining unauthorized remote access to a computer. This may be done in different ways; for example, it can be done through a program installed on the targeted computer. Very often a backdoor is installed by a computer worm that has infected the computer. Trojan horses are also often used as backdoors.

Backdoors can then be used for various purposes. For example, spammers can use them to send spam emails from the compromised computer.

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Back-end - see Admin panel

Bandwidth - when used in relation to the Internet and to computing in general, bandwidth refers to the maximum capacity of a network. More simply put, it's the maximum speed with which data is transferred through the network (e.g. the Internet). It's measured in bits per second (or in kilobits, megabits, gigabits, etc. per second).

Bandwidth also refers to the actual transfer, which is usually less than the possible maximum. This is, so to say, the average quantity of the transferred data.

Bandwidth is not to be confused with the total amount of data transferred between a site and its visitors.

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Batch file - a script file used by Windows (and DOS) operating systems. It consists of commands that are intended to be executed by a command-line interpreter. This program in Windows is called Command prompt or just cmd. When the file is executed the program goes through it and executes the commands that are contained in the file. It's usually used for automatically performing actions that have to be executed often.

Such files have the file extension .bat (e.g. example.bat), or they can also have the extensions .cmd and .btm.

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Binary code - it's used for representing text, numbers and any type of information using the binary number system. The binary number system consists only of the digits 0 and 1, so all the information is encoded using these two digits. A single digit (0 or 1) in a binary code is called a bit. Each symbol when represented using binary code consists of a string of eight bits. So, for instance, the word binary has six letters and when represented with binary code it would consist of six strings; each of these strings would consist of eight digits 0 and 1.

Binary file - as opposed to a human-readable text file, a binary file contains any data that's encoded using the binary number system. In this way, unlike a text file, a binary file may contain not only text, but also images, videos, sound, etc.

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Bit (short for binary digit) - this is a computer term used for the smallest and most basic informational unit. A single bit can be either 0 or 1. Bits are used in binary code for encoding any type of information. One kilobit is 1000 bits, one megabit is 1000 kilobits, and so on.

A bit is not to be confused with a byte. A byte is a string of eight bits.

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Bitmap - when used in computer graphics, a bitmap is the way in which images are stored and represented. Literally, it means a map of bits in which, so to say, colors are mapped to bits.

Since digital images consist of pixels, it can also be said to be a map of pixels where each pixel stores some color or colors, and the pixels themselves are stored in the bitmap using computer bits. If the term is defined more strictly, it refers to an image in which each pixel is stored with one bit, which means that the pixel can contain only one color (black or white). However, it's usually used as a more general term synonymous to a pixmap, in which a pixel can be stored with more bits (e.g. 16, 32, 64); this means that a pixel can store more colors and this in turn gives the image a greater color depth.

There are different bitmap file formats (e.g. BMP, PNG, GIF, JPEG, etc.) that use different types of compression.

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Blink - a web-browser engine developed by Google and used in its web-browser Google Chrome. It's also used in other browsers such as Opera and also in other types of applications.

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Blog - a blog is a type of website which consists of separate posts published and displayed usually in chronological order. It can be compared to an online diary though it doesn't necessarily have to be related to the experiences of a single individual.

There are popular web applications such as WordPress that are specifically intended for creating and managing blogs.

BMP - a file format used for storing images. Sometimes it's called just a bitmap, but bitmap is a much more general term used to refer to any digital image format. Images in the BMP file format are uncompressed which means that they have a very good quality but the file size is quite big, or at least significantly bigger compared to other image formats. This means that they are not very practical if they have to be displayed on a website, for example.

Files in the BMP format have the file extension .bmp (e.g. example_pic.bmp). Other common image file formats are GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.

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Boolean - this is a type of data/variable that can only have the values true and false. When represented on the frontend of a site you can think of it as an option with radio buttons True and False (they can be labeled in a different way), and you can select only one of these two radio buttons.

Breadcrumbs - breadcrumbs are often used on websites, but they can also be used in any application. This is a navigation device that shows the path from the homepage to the currently displayed page. They're usually displayed somewhere at the top of the page. They consist of steps and each one is a link to the particular page. For example, they look similar to this: Home > Category 1 > Product 1. This example shows that currently the user is on the page of Product 1. By clicking in the breadcrumbs on the respective link they can go back to the page of Category 1 or to the home page.

Browser - see Web-browser

Byte - a unit of information. One byte corresponds to one letter, symbol, etc. It's not to be confused with a bit. Bits are so to say the building blocks of bytes. One byte is composed of eight bits.

Units larger than bytes are kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, etc. One kilobyte has 1000 bytes, one megabyte has 1000 kilobytes, and so on.

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BZIP2 - this is a tool for compressing files. It has a better compression, so to say, than other formats such as ZIP and GZIP. This means that, for example, a file compressed with bzip2 will be smaller in size than the same file compressed with zip. It's not as popular as zip and gzip; bzip2 files (with the file extension .bz2) are more rarely used.

Unlike the ZIP format, it can be used to compress only a single file. So usually a group of files is first packed into an archive using another format (e.g. ZIP) and then BZIP2 is used to further compress that archive. In this way it becomes smaller in size and it's therefore transferred faster.

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Cache - refers to the process of storing data, and also to the actual stored data, for the purpose of reducing the load on the server, for reducing the amount of data that has to be transferred between the server and the client, and consequently for reducing the loading time of web-pages.

When a user requests a page and all or some of the data needed for displaying that page is cached, then that data is served from the cache. Usually what's cached is static content that doesn't change very often (e.g. HTML and CSS files, images, etc.).

There are many different types of cache. It can be on the side of the client; for example, web-browsers cache content. Or there can be cached data on any of the servers through which the data passes.

CAPTCHA (stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) - refers to a test that's used to check if a user is human. It's typically used to prevent robots on the Internet from using various services. An example of this is the registration of free email accounts. Webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo have CAPTCHA tests that are used to prevent bots from registering and using email accounts to send spam, for example.

Such CAPTCHA tests consist of an image of letters and/or numbers that are distorted and may have some additional background elements. The letters/numbers have to be typed by the user in a field that's provided so as to prove that they are human. CAPTCHAs don't necessarily have to be visual; there are also audio CAPTCHAs.

Depending on the CAPTCHA test, they are not always a hundred percent successful, and some bots may pass them.

CGI (stands for Common Gateway Interface) - this is a way for processing scripts and dynamic content. CGI programs (also referred to as CGI scripts) run on the server. When a web-browser sends a request which causes such a script to be executed, then the output that the script produces is sent back to the browser.

There's a variant of CGI called FastCGI. HostKnox servers support both. HostKnox customers can switch between CGI and FastCGI from the section PHP Settings of the Pixie control panel.

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Character encoding - see Character set

Character set (often called just Charset) - this is a term that's used interchangeably with terms such as character encoding, character map and code pages. The term character set, however, is the most popular. It refers to a group of characters (letters, numbers, symbols) that are used by an encoding system. This encoding is used when saving and storing data. For example, when you type a text and you save it as a file, the letters and symbols in that text are encoded using the particular system.

There are different encoding schemes. Some of the most popular ones are ASCII and UTF-8. Each such scheme has a character set that it can encode. For example, ASCII supports the letters a to z, A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9 and some symbols, while UTF-8 also supports letters from other alphabets (e.g. Cyrillic, Greek).

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CLI (stands for Command-line interface and Command-line interpreter) - refers to an interface with which a user interacts and performs actions with a computer program by typing commands. It also refers to the actual program that has a command-line interface; such a program is called a command-line interpreter. Another type of interface is a graphical user interface; with it the user can interact with the computer program through a visual interface.

There are computer operating systems that have a command-line interface, though most modern operating systems have both a command-line and a graphical user interface (e.g. Linux).

A command-line interface is also called a console user interface, or just console.

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Client - when used in relation to network connections, a client is a computer application that runs on the local computer of a user and that connects to servers on the Internet. Clients are, for example, web-browsers, email clients (e.g. Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird), FTP clients (e.g. FileZilla), etc.

It may also be used to refer to the whole local computer that connects to servers.

Client-server model - refers to a model of a computer network in which the resources are provided by computers called servers to other computers called clients (e.g. local computers). The clients don't offer any resource, instead they request resources (e.g. websites) from the servers. For example, when clients want to visit the HostKnox website, they make a request using a web-browser. The resources for the site are stored on the HostKnox server which provides them to the clients.

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Client-side - this is used to refer to something that runs on the local computer of the user. It's usually not used to refer to all operations that are performed on the side of the client, but to those performed by programs that run on the local computer and that connect to servers in a network. Such programs are, for instance, web-browsers. The execution of JavaScript code is an example of client-side operations. JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that's used in web pages. The page with the actual code is sent to the web-browser from the server, but the JavaScript code in that page is executed by the web-browser on the user's local computer.

Closed-source software - see Proprietary software

cmd - a command-line program that comes prepackaged with the various Windows operating systems. Since it's a command-line interpreter, users can perform different tasks with cmd by typing and executing commands. For example, they can use cmd instead of the graphical user interface to manipulate files. The full name of the program is cmd.exe and it's also called Command Prompt.

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CMS (stands for Content Management System) - refers to computer applications for creating and managing content. The term is mainly used to refer to web applications for creating and managing websites. They allow people who have no knowledge of programming languages to create websites. These can be any type of websites, including blogs, forums and web-stores.

These applications have an admin panel (also called backend, dashboard, etc.) from which the site and its content can be managed, and a frontend which is the actual site that visitors see.

There are different CMSs and many of them are open-source. Examples of some of the most popular ones are WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB, etc. HostKnox servers provide an ideal environment for running such applications.

ColdFusion - refers both to a scripting language and to the platform that uses that language. HostKnox servers don't support ColdFusion.

Color depth - when used in relation to digital images, this refers to the number of bits per pixel. A digital image consists of pixels. Each pixel is stored using bits. The number of bits per pixel indicate the number of colors that a single pixel can display. The more bits per pixel, the deeper the colors.

When the color depth or the quality of the colors is indicated, for example, as 16-bit color, 32-bit color, etc. this shows the number of bits per pixel.

In addition to color depth, images also have resolution; that's the number of pixels in the image.

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Command Prompt - see cmd

Command shell - see Shell

Control Panel - when used in relation to webhosting, a control panel is a web-application with which users can manage their hosting accounts. For example, the control panel can be used to manage the files on the account, to create and delete databases, to manage the DNS records, etc. Such applications provide a graphical interface that can be accessed with a web-browser.

There are some popular ready solutions such as cPanel and Plesk. HostKnox uses its own control panel software. It's called Pixie Control Panel.

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Cookie - refers to a small piece of data sent from the server to the web-browser of the user. When the user visits a website it sends a cookie to the browser which stores it. The cookie is used for various things. Most often it is used to store login information and track the activity and session of the user on the website. For example, if you disable cookies for your browser, you won't be able to log in to your accounts on websites because without cookies they won't be able to track the session and to identify whether you're actually logged in or out.

cPanel - a popular web application for hosting account control panels. When installed on the server it provides users with an interface and tools for managing their hosting accounts.

HostKnox doesn't use cPanel. We have our own control panel software called Pixie.

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Cron job - cron jobs are automatic tasks that run on the server at fixed time intervals (e.g. every hour). The actual tasks are performed by executing scripts. The cron job specifies the script that has to be executed and its location on the hosting account, and the exact time or intervals at which it should be executed. Cron jobs can be used for all sorts of things; for example, with cron jobs you can regularly update some information on your site, back up the database of your site, etc.

Users can set up and manage cron jobs via SSH (for more advanced users), or from the control panel of their hosting accounts. HostKnox customers can manage cron jobs from the Cron Jobs section of the Pixie control panel. For more information check out the tutorial on how to manage cron jobs with the Pixie control panel.

Cross-site scripting - refers to a security flaw of websites that is exploited by abusers by inserting scripts in the code of the site's pages. When users open pages that have been injected with malicious code, the attacker can, for example, obtain sensitive information from the user, such as login credentials. Cross-site scripting is abbreviated XSS.

CSS (stands for Cascading Style Sheets) - a computer language used for describing the style of a document/file written in a markup language such as HTML. Markup languages are used for creating web pages, and HTML is the basic one. Simply put, CSS defines how the content of a page should be formatted and displayed: the font, size and color of the text, background and other colors, etc. It's mainly used to format HTML documents. While HTML can also be used to format and style the content, it's mainly used to describe the actual content (e.g. what parts of the text should be headings, paragraphs, etc.). With CSS it is more convenient to format documents; one CSS file can be used to define the style of many HTML documents. CSS files end with the extension .css (e.g. example.css).

Daemon - a computer program that runs in the background and it's, so to say, invisible to the user. It's used for various processes with which the user is not supposed to interfere. Usually it serves other programs or hardware devices.

Dashboard - when used in relation to web applications for managing websites (CMS applications), it usually refers to the homepage of the administration panel. Sometimes it can be used in reference to the whole admin panel.

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Database - databases are used to store data in a precisely defined and organized way. A database has a strict structure that consists of tables with rows and columns. A website has files located in the document root of the hosting account and a database (the files are not stored in the database).

The connection and interaction between users and the database, and the general management of the database is performed through applications referred to as database management systems (DBMS). There are many such applications: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and others. All HostKnox servers use MySQL.

Since a database stores all the crucial information of a website, it's very important to back it up regularly. In this way if something happens to the site, it can be restored. There are different ways you can do this. For some more information you may find useful the tutorial on how to back up your website, and the sections on exporting databases and importing databases in the tutorial on how to transfer websites. You'll also find some other practical things related to databases in our miscellaneous tutorials and in the HOWTOs section of the knowledge base.

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Database engine - the software in a database management system (DBMS) through which the system manipulates data in the database (e.g. creates, deletes, etc.). It's also called storage engine. The terms database engine and database management system are used as synonymous, but the database engine is part of the database management system. One DBMS can support more than one database engine. For example, one of the most widely used DBMSs is MySQL, and database engines that MySQL uses and supports are, for instance, InnoDB, MyISAM, TokuDB.

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Datagram - refers to a unit used for transferring information in a network. When data is transmitted through networks such as the Internet, it's broken into small pieces. These pieces are often called datagrams, though they may have a different name depending on the network. When it comes to the Internet, for example, these pieces of data are usually called packets. While the Ethernet datagrams are usually called Ethernet frames.

There are some differences between the different terms and what they stand for, but they are often used interchangeably.

Data Transfer - when used in reference to a website, it stands for the total traffic of the site. This is all the data transferred between your site and the visitors who have opened and browsed through the site.

It's usually specified for some period of time (e.g. a month).

DBMS (stands for Database Management System) - software that provides access to the information in databases, specifies how databases should be organized, created, managed, etc. There are many different systems. Some of the more popular ones are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and others. HostKnox servers use MySQL as a DBMS.

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DHCP (stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) - a network protocol from the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) that's used for dynamically assigning IP address and other Internet characteristics to computers. It's used by computers to request an IP address from a server. The server has a pool of IP addresses from which it assigns an address to the computer.

Each time the computer is restarted (or the Internet connection is interrupted and then restarted) it requests an IP address. In theory this means that each time the computer can be assigned a different IP address, but in practice DHCP has mechanisms so that it usually assigns the same IP address to a computer.

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Digital container format (also called container, wrapper format) - used to refer to file formats that can contain different types of data. So a file that's created with a digital container format can hold various types of data simultaneously. The container doesn't describe how the data is encoded but just how the different data types should be put together in a single file.

Such containers are typically used for multimedia. Some can store both audio and video streams (e.g. AVI), while others can store audio, video and subtitles together (e.g. Matroska/MKV, MP4).

Disk Storage - when referring to hosting accounts, this is the total amount of hard drive space that's given to a hosting account on the server.

DNS (stands for Domain Name System) - this is a hierarchical naming system used for translating domain names into IP addresses. An analogy that's often used as an example is that of a phone book in which human-readable domain names are mapped to IP addresses. In this way it's easier for users to access websites since domain names are much easier to remember than a string of numbers.

Each domain name has name servers assigned to it. They store the DNS records of the domain. The DNS records provide the actual information associated with the domain name (e.g. the IP address mapped to the domain name, the mail server that handles mail for the domain name, etc.). Other servers on the Internet get that information from the nameservers. There are many local DNS servers that cache copies of the records of domain names. This means that when a user tries to open a site, meaning there's a DNS query, the response will be much quicker. On the other hand, when information in the DNS records is changed or the nameservers of a domain name are changed, some time has to pass before all local DNS servers update their information related to that domain name.

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DNS A Record - the DNS A record (short for Address record) of a domain name translates that domain name into an IP address. Each domain name has different DNS records that specify the information related to the domain name.

DNS blacklist - a list of IP addresses associated with email spam. There are different DNS blacklists that are maintained by different organizations/sites. Whether an email message is looked up for belonging to a DNS blacklist, and which blacklists are checked, depends on how the software of the mail server that receives the message is configured. A mail server can be configured to check the IP addresses from which emails are received, and to block them if they're blacklisted.

If an IP is blacklisted, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's used for spamming. This also depends on how the particular blacklist is maintained and on some other factors.

DNS CNAME record (DNS Canonical Name record) - a DNS record used for adding a domain name as an alias for another domain name. This other domain name is considered the canonical one. This means that if there's a request for the alias, it will be redirected to the canonical domain. A query for a domain name is resolved with the help of a DNS A record which maps that domain name to an IP address. If there's no A record for the domain and the query encounters a CNAME record instead, then the query is restarted looking for the A record of the canonical domain name that's specified in the CNAME record.

For example, if there's a CNAME record in which the domain example2.com is specified as an alias for example.com, and there's a request for example2.com, the query will be restarted and a request for example.com will be sent instead.

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DNS MX Record - the MX record (short for Mail Exchange Record) of a domain name specifies the name of the mail server that processes the emails for that domain name. A domain name can have more than one MX record, which means that its emails can be handled by more than one mail server. For each of the MX records there's a preference value that specifies which mail server should be used first.

DNS Propagation - this refers to the time needed for servers on the Internet to update the cached DNS records of a domain name, when the DNS records of that domain name are changed.

DNS SPF record (stands for DNS Sender Policy Framework record) - this record is used as a measure against spam and email spoofing. It provides ways to check whether incoming email messages are really sent from the domain name of the email address.

There isn't much support for SPF records and they are not really used. For the same purpose DNS TXT records can be used to provide the necessary information against email spam and spoofing.

DNS SRV record (stands for DNS Service record) - a DNS record used to specify the hostname and port number (as well as some other parameters) of servers that can be used by various services and protocols. It's generally used for some of the newer network protocols like SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). It's a record that's rarely used and is not essential.

DNS TXT record - this type of record can be used to add any information related to the domain. It can be any human readable information, or it can be information used by some other services and systems.

Document root - when referring to hosting accounts and websites, the document root is a folder on the user's hosting account that stores the files and folders of the website. The exact name of the document root folder and the path to it on the hosting account depends on the particular hosting provider. Usually the document root folder is called either public_html or www. When visitors open the domain name of your site (e.g. yourdomain.com), they'll see the content corresponding to the files that are in the document root on your hosting account.

On HostKnox servers the document root of a hosting account is public_html and the path to it on the account is /home/username/public_html (username is replaced with the actual username of the account).

Domain name - a human-friendly name that identifies a website, a server or a local computer on the Internet. For example, hostknox.com is a domain name. The domain name is used to access the particular resource (e.g. a website) on the Internet. A domain name is mapped to an IP address. The system that takes care of this process of translating domain names into IP addresses is called the Domain Name System. Domain names can be registered from domain name registrars.

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Domain name registrant - this term is used to refer to the person or company that has registered a domain name. For example, if you register a domain a name, you'll be the domain name registrant, and you'll be entitled to use that domain name for the period for which you have registered it.

Domain name registrar - refers to an organization that deals with the registration of domain names. Domain names are registered for at least a year, while the maximum period is 10 years. If the registration of a domain name is not renewed, then it expires and becomes available for others who want to register that name.

Users can register domain names directly from the site of a domain name registrar, but very often this is done through a web hosting company when the user buys a hosting package. In such a case, often the registration is free for the customer, meaning that the fee for the domain name registration is paid by the hosting company.

Domain name registry - refers to an organization that keeps a database of domain names and the information associated with each domain name (e.g. registrants). A registry administers a top-level domain (e.g. .com) and so it keeps the database of domain names registered within that top-level domain (e.g. yourdomain.com, example.com).

A domain name registry is not to be confused with a domain name registrar. A registrar provides the actual services for registering domain names. It then sends the information about the registered domain names to the registry, which maintains that information.

Domain parking - refers to a domain name that doesn't have a hosting account and consequently it's not associated with a website. However, a parked domain can be pointed to an existing website that already has a domain name. In this way the website can be accessed by using both the main domain name and the parked one. This adding/pointing of parked domain names can be done from the control panel of the hosting account.

HostKnox customers can also do this, but in the Pixie control panel we don't use the terms domain parking and parked domains. If a HostKnox customer owns a domain name that doesn't have a hosting account and they want to add it to an existing account that has a domain name, they can do this from the Pixie control panel's section Domain Names and DNS Settings of that existing account. For more information check out the tutorial on how to manage domain names and DNS settings with the Pixie control panel, and in particular the part on adding domain names.

Drive-by download - a term that refers to software that was not intentionally downloaded by the user. It may happen when visiting a website, or the user may be tricked by a deceptive pop-out window to click on a button on that window without realizing and without being explicitly informed that something will be downloaded. The downloaded software is very often malicious.

Driver - when used in relation to computers, it refers to a computer program with which a hardware device can be used by the operating system and/or users. Many times in order for a hardware device to be, so to say, recognized by the operating system and to function to its full capability, a driver(s) for that device has to be installed.

Drupal - a web application for creating and managing websites. It's open source and free. HostKnox provides Drupal hosting services and an ideal server environment for sites created with Drupal. For more information on installing and managing Drupal you can check out our Drupal tutorials and articles.

Email client - an application for sending, receiving and managing email messages. It runs on the local computer of the user. Some popular email clients are Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail and others.

For information on how to configure these applications, as well as some other useful information related to emails, check out our email tutorials. You may also find useful information in the email section of our knowledgebase.

Email forwarding - the process of redirecting email messages sent to one address to a different address. If the email address is one created from the hosting account of the user, meaning it's not an email address registered with a webmail service, the user can enable/disable email forwarding from the control panel of the account. It's done per email address. When you enable email forwarding for an address, all messages sent to that address will be redirected to a specified address (or addresses).

HostKnox customers can manage email forwarding from the Email section of the Pixie control panel. For more information check out the tutorial on how to manage mailboxes with the Pixie control panel, and in particular the section on forwarding.

Email message headers - these are fields at the beginning of an email message that contain information related to it. Such fields are for example To, From, Subject, etc. By default, most of these headers are not shown by email clients, but the user has the option to view all the headers of a message. The exact way that this is done depends on the particular email client. For more information on email headers and how to view them with some of the popular email clients, check out our tutorial on email headers.

Ethernet - a set of technologies used for local area networks (LANs) and metropolitan area networks (MANs). Ethernet is the technology for creating wired LANs. The other technology that's used for LANs is Wi-Fi, which is wireless.

Ethernet includes all the physical aspects of the network, such as cables, LAN adapters, switches, etc., as well as the specifications and procedures for transmitting data between computers in the LAN. This data is divided and transmitted in units that are called datagrams or packets, but when used in reference to Ethernet they are usually called Ethernet frames.

Ethernet is very often used by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to connect their clients to the Internet. The user is connected using Ethernet to the networking devices of the ISP, which in turn connect the user to the Internet.

See also:

Ethernet address - see MAC address

Ethernet frame - a datagram (i.e. data packet) used on Ethernet to transmit data between devices in a local area network (LAN). The data transferred between computers in a LAN is broken into pieces called Ethernet packets or Ethernet frames. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but the frame is actually contained within the packet.

Each Ethernet frame contains the source MAC address of the device (e.g. a computer) that transmits the data and the destination MAC address of the device to which it's sent. It also contains the actual data that's transmitted.

See also:

Extension - see Add-on

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