Knowledgebase
Glossary from S to Z
This is a glossary of terms and phrases related to web hosting, web applications and the Internet.
This part of the glossary is for terms that begin with the letters from S to Z. The parts that cover the other letters in the alphabet are:
SEF URL (stands for Search Engine Friendly URL) - refers to a web address that's easy to remember and read by people. If a web page has dynamic content its original URL address will contain query strings with various symbols. These URLs are difficult to remember by people. To make them more human and search engine friendly, URL rewriting directives can be used. Terms such as pretty URLs and clean URLs are also used to refer to such rewritten URLs. For example, the URL yourdomain.com/index.php?id_product=8&controller=product&id_lang=1 can be turned into the friendly URL yourdomain.com/en/example-category/8-example-product.html.
If you use a web application for creating and managing your website, they usually have options for enabling and managing friendly URLs.
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Search engine - a software technology that searches and indexes the content available on the Internet. Search engines use web crawlers that retrieve information from web pages. This information is then indexed and stored by the search engine. When a user performs a query, the search engine finds and displays a list of web pages that are related to the word or phrase used in the search query. Search engines have different criteria according to which they determine the ranking of the web pages in the results. The most popular search engine is Google; other popular ones are, for example, Bing and Yahoo.
Server - used to refer to a computer program that runs on a computer connected to a network (the Internet) and that provides services to other programs on the same computer and to programs running on other computers connected to the network. It can also be used to refer to the actual computer that provides services to other computers in the network.
An example of a web server software is Apache Web Server.
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Server-side - a term used to refer to processes, applications and scripting languages that run and are executed on the server. It's opposed to client-side which refers to applications and operations that run on the local computer of the client (e.g. a web-browser).
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Shareware - software that users can try for free but that has some restrictions either in terms of its functionality and available options, or in terms of the period for which it can be used. After the trial period expires or in order for the customer to use the full functionality of the software, they have to purchase it. It's a type of proprietary software.
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Shell - the interface with which users interact with the operating system of a computer and access and use its functions and services. A shell can have a command-line interface or a graphical user interface.
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Shopping cart - when used in relation to web-based applications, it refers to applications that are used for creating and managing online stores (e.g. Magento, PrestaShop). It can also be used to refer not only to the whole application, but just to the actual cart on the site in which customers place the products they want to purchase.
Sitemap - a list of pages of a website. A sitemap page can be shown on the frontend of the site so that users can visit it and be able to find any page on the website more quickly. A sitemap can also be a file on the hosting account that's not accessible to visitors on the website, but that is intended for search engine crawlers. In any case, a sitemap is used for search engine optimization. It increases the likelihood of having all the pages of your site indexed by search engines.
If you use a web application for building and managing your website, most such applications usually have a sitemap by default, and each time you add a new page it's automatically added to the sitemap.
SMTP (stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - the protocol used for sending and transferring email messages.
The port number that SMTP uses for a plain connection is 587. If TLS/SSL is used with SMTP for an encrypted connection, the port number is 465. The port number can be configured from the email client. For more information check our email tutorials; there you'll find out how to configure various email clients and other useful information.
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Spam - unsolicited messages. The term is used to describe any type of unwanted electronic messages, but most often it's used for email messages. Typically spam messages are for advertising products and services, but they can be about anything. Spam messages may contain viruses, or they can contain information intended to trick the user to disclose personal information.
Usually spam messages are not actually sent from the computer of the spammer and this makes it more difficult to trace spammers. Spammers can gain access to other computers (e.g. by infecting the computer with viruses) and use them to send unsolicited messages.
SpamAssassin - an application for detecting and filtering email spam. All HostKnox servers have SpamAssassin installed. It's automatically enabled for every mailbox that users create. HostKnox customers can enable/disable the filter per mailbox and configure its aggressiveness. This can be done from the Email section of the Pixie control panel. For more information check out the tutorial on how to manage mailboxes and email settings, and in particular the spam filter section.
Spoofing - refers to creating a website or email message that's disguised to look like an existing site, or in the case with emails with a forged sender address. In the case with website spoofing, the site is made to look visually as the original site. The URL address of the spoof site may be almost the same, or there are techniques to display in the web-browser an address that's the same as that of the original, but in reality it's a different one. Most often websites related to money transfers are spoofed so that sensitive information (e.g. credit card numbers) can be obtained from users.
In the case of email spoofing, the user receives an email message with a forged sender address. It can be an email address of a trusted person or organization. This is usually done when the abuser wants to obtain sensitive information from the user (i.e. phishing).
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Spyware - software that's used for collecting information about a user and tracking the activity of that user on a network (e.g. the Internet). It's generally considered malicious software. It can be installed on a computer without the knowledge of its user and it can then be used to gather sensitive information (e.g. bank account information, login credentials). Spyware can also be used by companies to monitor the activity of their employees.
Unlike other malware such as viruses and worms, the intention of spyware is not to replicate and spread and infect other computers, but to send information from the computer on which it's installed. There are different ways that spyware can be installed on a computer: it can be installed through a Trojan horse; it can be disguised as a useful application; it can be installed when the user visits an infected site, etc.
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SQL (Structured Query Language) - a programming language used by database engines (such as MySQL). It can be used to insert, delete and modify data in the database, as well as for executing queries.
An easy way to execute SQL queries and do various things with the data in a database(s) is with an application called phpMyAdmin. It is accessed and used through a web-browser.
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SQL injection - an attack on a website's database by inserting malicious SQL code. Information (e.g. email addresses, passwords, etc.) can then be obtained from the compromised database.
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SSH (Secure Shell) - a network protocol that's used for securely connecting to another computer in the network, executing commands, transferring data, etc. In the context of web hosting users can establish a connection via SSH from their local computer to their hosting account on the server with an SSH client (e.g. PuTTY for Windows users). Then they can perform various actions on their account by executing commands.
For information on how to connect to your hosting account via SSH check out our SSH tutorials. You'll also find useful information in the SSH articles in our knowledge base.
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SSI (Server Side Includes) - a server-side scripting language. It's a simple language that's rarely used. SSI is not supported on HostKnox servers.
SSL (stands for Secure Sockets Layer) - a network protocol for encrypting data transferred over the Internet. It's used for providing better security when sensitive information has to be transferred. The newer protocol that's typically used for encryption is TLS (Transport Layer Security).
The two terms are used interchangeably and are usually put together (TLS/SSL).
Storage engine - see Database engine
Style sheet - refers to files and languages that define the visual look of a webpage(s). Usually the content of a webpage and its style and formatting are separated in different files. The content is specified with a markup language like HTML, and the style of the page is specified in a stylesheet file using a stylesheet language. The most commonly used stylesheet language is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
This separation of content and style makes it easier and more efficient to specify, edit and control the style and formatting of webpages. For example, a single or a few stylesheet file(s) can be used to style all the pages of a site.
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SugarCRM - a web application for managing customers (a customer relationship management system). It has a community edition which is open-source and free.
HostKnox provides SugarCRM hosting services, and our servers provide an ideal environment for SugarCRM. For information on how to install and use SugarCRM check out our SugarCRM tutorial.
Subdomain - refers to a domain that is a part of a larger domain. A domain name consists of levels called labels or subdomains. The right-most part is the first level known as the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .net, .org, etc.). The part of the name that's to the left of the top-level domain is subordinate to it, or its subdomain. Each part to the left is a subdomain of the one before it. For example, in the name example.yourdomain.com, example is a subdomain of yourdomain, and yourdomain is a subdomain of .com.
In practice when people refer to a domain name they usually mean the main domain name of a site (e.g. yourdomain.com), while when they refer to a subdomain they mean the subdomains of the main domain name (e.g. example.yourdomain.com).
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TCP (stands for Transmission Control Protocol) - one of the two principal protocols in the Internet protocol suite, together with IP (Internet Protocol). When data is transferred over the Internet, TCP breaks that data into segments (packets). IP delivers the data and TCP reassembles the packets. TCP also observers whether there are any problems with the delivery of the packets. For example, there might be lost packets. It makes sure that they are resent and delivered.
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TCP/IP - see Internet protocol suite
Telnet - a network protocol for accessing a remote host on the Internet. It can then be used to execute commands through a command-line interface. The connection that it provides is insecure and thus it's not really used anymore. For the same purpose the secure SSH is used.
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Text editor - a program for creating and editing plain text files. Text editors don't add any formatting and additional data to the files, that's why they are used for creating/editing configuration files and files with code.
A text editor shouldn't be confused with a word processor (such as Microsoft Word). Word processors are used to format text and add all sorts of data and information to the file. In this way they change the file and that's why they shouldn't be used for editing configuration files and files that contain code.
Examples of text editors are Notepad, Wordpad, Editpad, etc.
Theme - when referring to websites and web applications for creating websites, the theme defines the look of the site. When you use a web application for creating and managing websites, you can install different themes and thus change very quickly the way your site looks.
TIFF (acronym for Tagged Image File Format) - a file format for storing images. It has a wider range of options as compared to other image formats (e.g. JPEG, PNG), but it's not as common, at least when it comes to websites and the Internet.
TIFF images have the file extensions .tiff (e.g. example_image.tiff) or .tif (e.g. example_image.tif).
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TLD (stands for Top Level Domain) - the last part in a domain name. For example, in the domain names example.com and example.net the top-level domains are respectively .com and .net. There are different types of top-level domains; for example, there are generic top-level domains (gTLD) like .com, .net, .org, .info, etc.; there are also country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) like .us, .uk, .fr, .de, etc.
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TLS (stands for Transport Layer Security) - a protocol from the Internet protocol suite that's used for encrypting the data transfer. It's main purpose is to protect sensitive information. It's the newer security protocol that's typically used for encrypting data transferred through network connections, the predecessor being SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). Although they are different protocols the two terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same thing.
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Traceroute - a network tool for showing the path from the source host to the destination. It can be used, for example, to see the route from your local computer to a server (and respectively to a website on that server). Traceroute shows each host through which the request passes. This is done by sending data packets to each of them. Each host then sends back an echo reply to the source, and the total time for which this is done is shown in the results displayed by traceroute.
The tool can be used with a command-line program by executing a command. In Windows this can be done with the cmd command-line program (it comes prepackaged with the operating system). In Windows however the respective tool is called tracert and that's the command that has to be used followed by the IP address or URL address of the destination (e.g. tracert hostknox.com).
Trident - the web-browser engine used for Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer. The engine is also used in other web-browsers and in other types of applications.
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Trojan horse - a type of malware (malicious software). A Trojans is a malicious program that's usually disguised to look as a regular and useful application, so that the user is tricked to install it on the computer. The Trojan is used by the abuser to gain access to the computer and may cause various problems: destroy data, steal data and information, crash the computer, transfer files and install other software, etc.
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TTL (Time to live) - specifies for how long data should be cached. It's used mainly for IP packets and DNS records. The data that's transferred through the Internet is chopped up into IP packets. Each one has a TTL; in this case its purpose is to make sure that packets that cannot be delivered to the destination are discarded.
DNS records also have a TTL. It's set by the nameserver for the records. Other servers cache a record for the time specified by its TTL. This speeds up the process of resolving DNS queries (and consequently of displaying the associated website), since servers that have the record cached don't have to query the authoritative nameserver.
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) - a network protocol that's part of the Internet protocol suite. It's used for exchanging data in the form of data packets (datagrams). It can be viewed as a simpler alternative to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), and in certain situation it's the preferred protocol for transferring data on the Internet. Unlike TCP, it's unreliable in the sense that it doesn't provide checking and correction of errors. But this also means that the connection that it establishes and the transfer of data packets is faster. That's why it's the preferred protocol, for example, for applications for real-time video and audio streaming. It's also used when the query has to be quick and the amount of data that's transferred is small; for example, DNS queries are performed using UDP.
When the data transfer needs to be more secure and reliable, TCP is used.
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Unicode - a standard that's used in computing for encoding and representing text. It supports letters from most of the existing alphabets, as well as many other characters. The most common character encoding systems that use the Unicode standard are UTF-8 and UTF-16.
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Unix - a computer operating system developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It influenced the development of later operating systems (often called Unix-like), such as Linux and BSD.
URI (stands for Uniform Resource Identifier) - it's used to identify a resource. It's most often used to refer to resources on the Internet, though it's not specifically reserved for that. URI is a more general term than URL.
URL (stands for Uniform Resource Locator) - this is the location of a resource on the Internet and the means to get to it (usually a protocol such as HTTP). For example, https://hostknox.com is an URL. A URL is a type of URI.
UTF-8 - a character encoding system that can encode all the characters available in the Unicode repertoire. So unlike other popular character encoding systems such as ASCII, it can encode not only letters from a to z and A to Z, but also from other alphabets. It's the most widely used character encoding systems.
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UTF-16 - a character encoding system that can encode all the characters available in the Unicode repertoire. Another encoding system that can do the same thing is UTF-8 (it's more widely used). The difference between the two is that UTF-16 uses 16-bit code units and UTF-8 uses 8-bit code units. Another popular character encoding system ASCII uses 7-bit code units. Code units are the sequences used to encode characters.
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Vim - a free and open-source text editor. It can be used on different operating systems (e.g. Windows, Linux, OS X, etc.). It has a command-line interface which means that tasks (e.g. deleting, saving, etc.) are performed by executing commands. In relation to hosting accounts, if Vim is installed on the server, it can be used to edit files directly on the hosting account. HostKnox servers have Vim installed.
Vim has a built-in tutorial with which beginners can quickly learn how to use it. For more information on how to start the tutorial and use Vim check out our article on how to use the Vim tutorial via SSH. You may also find useful the other articles in the SSH section in our knowledgebase.
Pico and nano are other text editors that can be used via SSH to edit files on hosting accounts.
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Virus - a type of malicious software. It's a program that's inserted in another program. When the user runs the infected program on the computer, it creates more copies of itself and puts them in files and other programs on the infected computer. Because of these characteristics of multiplying and creating copies of itself and of infecting other files, it's defined as a virus, and this distinguishes it from other types of malware (e.g. trojan horses, worms). Viruses can be used to steal information, corrupt data, send spam emails from the computer, display some type of message on the infected computer; they can also affect the performance of the computer processor and the hard drive.
There are different ways a virus can infect a computer. It can be attached to a program or a file which is familiar and known to the user, so that when the program/file is executed the computer gets infected. It can also be added, for example, to email attachments.
Anti-virus applications are used for stopping viruses, but many times viruses use techniques to avoid being detected. And especially if the virus is a new one, it's likely that the anti-virus application will not detect it.
VPN (stands for Virtual Private Network) - a private network that's created and used through a public network (e.g. the Internet). A VPN enables computers that are connected to the Internet, which is a public network, to transfer data as if they are connected to a private network. A basic advantage of this is that resources available on computers in the VPN can be securely accessed.
A VPN can be created and implemented with applications such as OpenVPN.
W3 - stands for WWW which is in turn an acronym for the World Wide Web.
W3C (stands for World Wide Web Consortium) - the main organization for developing and improving the standards for the World Wide Web.
WAN (Wide Area Network) - a computer network over a big area. It's used to refer to a network bigger than a metropolitan area network (MAN) or a local area network (LAN). A WAN is used to link LANs and MANs into a wider network and ultimately to the Internet, which can be considered a WAN. It's actually the widest network since it covers the whole world.
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WAP (stands for Wireless Application Protocol) - a technology used by wireless devices (e.g. mobile phones) to access the Internet.
Webalizer - a web-application that analyzes the log files of a server. Based on the analysis it compiles and presents statistics about the visitors and activity on the website.
Another similar tool is AWStats. HostKnox servers have AWStats installed.
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Web-based application - an application that's installed on a server and can be accessed and used by a user through a web-browser. Examples of web-based applications are content management systems such as Magento, Joomla, WordPress, etc. Control panels for managing hosting accounts, like our Pixie control panel, are also web applications.
Web browser - an application that runs on the local computer of a user. Its purpose is to open and display web pages. Examples of web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.
The software components of a web-browser are the web-browser engine and a host application. The web-browser engine takes care of the main task of displaying web pages and the host application provides the graphical interface for using the browser (e.g. menu bars, address bar, etc.).
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Web browser engine - the software part of a web-browser that's responsible for retrieving the documents and files (e.g. HTML, CSS, images, etc.) associated with an URL address and displaying the content of the web page based on the information and code in these documents.
It's the component of the web-browser that handles all the tasks related to displaying web pages.
The different web browsers use different engines. For example, Blink is the engine used in Google Chrome and Opera, Trident is used for Internet Explorer and Gecko for Mozilla Firefox.
Web browser engines, also called layout engines, are used by other applications that display web content (email clients).
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Web-crawler (also called crawler, web-spider, web robot, bot, ant) - an Internet bot that automatically indexes web pages. It's typically used by search engines. The crawler goes through the content of web pages, the data is stored by the search engine and it's used to give relevant results when users perform searches with that search engine.
Web feed - a technology for informing users about content that's updated often. A website can publish a link with which users can subscribe to the web feeds of that site. The user can check and read all the web feeds to which they are subscribed with an application called a feed reader. The application checks all the websites to which the user is subscribed for new content in the form of web feeds. This is a convenient way to check many sites for new content without the need to actually visit those sites with a web browser. A web feed usually contains only a short summary of the whole article, post, etc. that's published on the website.
The terms web feed and RSS are used interchangeably. A web feed is a more general term.
Web server - see Server
Webmail client - a web application for checking and managing emails. It's accessed and used from a web browser. The main advantage is that you don't need to have an email client on your local computer to check your mail, and so you can manage your emails from any computer that has access to the Internet and a web browser. In addition to this, when you use a webmail client you don't have to configure it with names of email servers, port numbers, etc.; you only need to know the name of the email address and the corresponding password. An example of a webmail application is Roundcube.
HostKnox servers have Roundcube installed. So if you prefer to use a web browser to manage your mail you can do it by accessing Roundcube on the HostKnox server on which your hosting account is located. You can do this either by using directly the URL address or by using the link to Roundcube in the Email section of the Pixie control panel. For more information check out our tutorial on how to access your email through a web browser.
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WHOIS - a protocol that's used for finding information related to registered domain names (e.g. IP address, creation and expiration dates, names of the owner, etc.). The information about registered domain names is stored in WHOIS databases that are maintained by domain name registrars. Information from these databases can be looked up by performing WHOIS queries. These queries can be performed either from command-line applications, or a from sites that provide web tools for querying WHOIS databases.
Wi-Fi - a technology for creating wireless local area networks. It can be used by devices such as computers, smartphones, etc. to connect to a local area network and consequently to the Internet. The device needs to have a wireless NIC (network interface controller); laptops, for example, have such an adapter built-in.
The other dominant technology for connecting devices in a local network is a wired one and it's called Ethernet.
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Wiki - a content management system (CMS) which is used for creating wiki websites. These are websites on which content and pages can be added and edited by all the users of the site. The most well-known wiki site is Wikipedia. Whether all visitors can edit the site or a user account has to be created first depends on the particular website. Content on wiki websites can be added and edited directly with the web-browser. This makes it possible for a lot of information to be quickly added and edited since this can be done by every user of the site. The term wiki refers both to web applications used for creating and managing such sites and to the actual sites. There are different wiki applications. One of the popular ones is MediaWiki which is the application used for Wikipedia.
WordPress - a web application for creating and managing blogs. It can also be used for creating other types of sites, not just blogs. It's open source and free.
HostKnox offers WordPress hosting. For more information on installing and managing WordPress check out our WordPress tutorials, as well as the WordPress articles in our knowledge base.
Word processor - a software application for creating, managing and formatting texts, tables, etc. (anything that can be typed/written). The most widely used word processor is Microsoft Word. There are also open-source alternatives such as OpenOffice.
Word processors are different applications than text editors (e.g. Notepad, Wordpad, etc.). Unlike text editors, word processors format the text and so insert additional data in the files. That's way they are not suitable for creating and editing files with code and configuration files; for this purpose text editors should be used. Word processors have a native file format which is used when creating and saving a file (like .doc for Microsoft Word).
World Wide Web - usually abbreviated as WWW or W3. The term World Wide Web is often used as a synonym to the Internet, but they are not exactly the same thing. The World Wide Web functions through the Internet. It consists of hypertext documents called web pages which are linked to each other with hyperlinks (often called just links). The Internet is the network that provides the means for the World Wide Web to function.
Web pages and the other documents of the World Wide Web are stored on servers. They are accessed and viewed by users from their local computers with the help of web browsers. Web pages are written in a markup language (e.g. HTML) which describes the structure of the page: paragraphs, headers, etc. The web browser displays the page according to the instructions provided by the markup language. The HTML document usually also contains paths to other resources that determine the style of the page (e.g. CSS files), media files (e.g. images), scripts for dynamic content.
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Worm - a malicious computer program. Like viruses it replicates itself, but while a virus is not a separate program and it has to be inserted in another program, a worm is a separate program on its own. Usually it uses computer networks (e.g. the Internet) to spread itself and infect computers. A typical way for a worm to infect a computer is for it to be sent as an attached file to an email message. When the user executes the file the computer gets infected.
Unlike viruses and trojan horses, the worm itself usually is not used to corrupt data, steal data or break the system which it has infected. Very often a worm is used to gain access to the computer (e.g. by installing a backdoor) and then that computer can be used for sending spam emails, for example.
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WWW - an acronym for World Wide Web; it's also abbreviated as W3. For more information see World Wide Web.
XML (stands for Extensible Markup Language) - a markup language for describing data. Like HTML (the markup language for creating web pages), XML uses tags to describe the data. However, the HTML tags are predefined, while XML tags are not predefined and can be invented by the author of the XML document.
Its purpose is basically to carry and store information that can be used, for example, by web applicatons.
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XSS - an acronym for cross-site scripting. See Cross-site scripting for some more details.
ZIP - a file format. A ZIP file is an archive that can contain one or more compressed files. It's one of the most widely used archive file formats. ZIP files have the file extension .zip (e.g. example.zip). It's typically used when you have to transfer many files. By using a ZIP archive you reduce the total size of the files, and one archive file is transferred much faster than if you transfer separately all the files that are in the archive. For example, when you download a web application, usually it's a ZIP archive that contains all the files of the application.
To create archives and to uncompress ZIP archives on your local computer you need an application designed for that purpose (e.g. 7-zip). On your hosting account you can manage ZIP archives either from the file manager of the control panel, or via SSH with the appropriate commands.
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