Internet Glossary - Moonlight Development


	Addon domain - An addon domain is a new domain name that points to a subdirectory within your existing domain hosting account. Addon domains must be registered domain names that you own, and that are configured to point to your web host's servers.
	Auto-responder - An automated email program that can be configured to return a prewritten response to all mail sent to a particular email address.
	Bandwidth - The amount of data allowed for transfer to and from your website. A certain amount is set each month.
	Cache - A cache temporarily stores web pages you have visited in your computer. When you revisit a website, your browser first checks to see if it is in your cache and will retrieve it from there because it is much faster than retrieving it from the web server.
	Cookies - Files containing information about visitors to a website (e.g., user name and preferences). This information is provided by the user during the first visit to a web server. The server records this information in a text file and stores this file on the visitor's hard drive. When the visitor accesses the same website again, the server looks for the cookie and configures itself based on the information provided.
	Data Transfer - see Bandwidth
	Disc space - The amount of space your website takes up on the web servers hard drive. The amount of space is measured in megabytes (abbreviated as "mb") and gigabytes (abbrevated as "gb")
	Domain name - The text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet (i.e., moonlightdev.com).
	Domain name registration - In order for your website to be seen on the internet it must first be registered at a "TLD registry". TLD stands for Top Level Domain. TLD registry organizations house online databases that contain information about domain names. The .com registry database, for example, contains the Internet whereabouts – or IP address – of moonlightdev.com. So in trying to find the Internet address of moonlightdev.com your computer must first find the .com registry database. There are many companies that offer this service for varying prices. Moonlight can register your domain name in the registry database for $15 a year.
	Download/Upload - Download: To copy something from a primary computer down to a connected computer (your home computer). Upload: the reverse process.
	Email forwarder - An email forwarder sends email that arrives into a particular mailbox to another email address.
	FTP - File Transfer Protocol. It is used to transfer files between computers. For instance, a web designer or owner of a web site would use FTP to transfer the websites files from his/her personal computer up to the web server.
	Hard Drive - The main device a computer uses to permanently store and retrieve information. Also called a "hard disk."
	Hosting - Providing space for your website on a computer known as a web server.
	HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language. The coded format language used for creating hypertext documents on the World Wide Web and controlling how Web pages appear.
	Hypertext documents - Web pages usually are hypertext documents. That is, they are documents that can be read by an internet browser and contain links to other documents. These links may be text that is highlighted in some way, or they may be images.
	IP Address (or IP Number) - Internet Protocol Address (or Number). Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. These numbers correspond to the domain name of a website. You can visit a website by typing in either it's IP Adress or it's domain name. Of course domain names are much easier to remember than IP Adresses.
	ISP - Internet Service Provider. A company that sells Internet connections.
	Keywords - Keywords are words or phrases that identify a document's contents and are targeted for search engines. They are placed within the documents code and are not visible to the viewer.
	Megabytes and Gigabytes - A megabyte is 1 million bytes of data and a gigabyte is 1 billion bytes of data. It doesn't matter what form the data is in - text, photographs, graphics, music, etc... it's all measured in the same way. An average size web site might contain between 10 and 75 megabytes. Larger sites will go into hundreds of megabytes. Huge corporate size websites can go into gigabytes and beyond.
	MySQL - MySQL is a type of SQL database. A database is an organized collection of information that a computer uses to select and display data.
	Parked domain - A Parked Domain is an inactive domain reserved for later use or one that points to another existing domain.
	Search Engine Optimization - A means of ensuring that your web pages are accessible to search engines and focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found.
	Subdomain - A sub domain is a way of 'splitting' your domain name into sections. For example, if your domain name is yourcompany.com, you could have a sub-domain called marketing.yourcompany.com. Sub-domains allow you to effectively have multiple 'mini' sites under one domain name.
	SSL - Secured Sockets Layer is a protocol that transmits your communications over the Internet in an encrypted form. SSL ensures that the information is sent, unchanged, only to the server you intended to send it to. Online shopping sites frequently use SSL technology to safeguard your credit card information.
	URL - Uniform Resource Locator. The World Wide Web address of a site on the Internet. The URL for Moonlight Development, for example, is http://www.moonlightdev.com.
	Web server/Server - A computer that stores Web documents and makes them available to the rest of the world.
	Webalizer - Webalizer is a statistics program that tracks all of the visitors to your website and reports that information back to you.
	Webmail - An internet based software that allows you to access your email account from any computer that is connected to the internet.
	Website Template - A pre-designed web page with representative graphics and text to be replaced with original graphics and text.