Web Hosting Check List

email - response time

Toll free phone - hours?

user experience wait time

fax

online (chat/boards)

Trouble Shooting

Online Manual

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Server Operating System

Server Type

• UNIX
• Apache
• ChillisoftASP
• NT (IIS)
• Linux
• Windows

   

  Reliability

  Down time

      Equipment

• Redundancy
• Back-up
• Speed
• Ping
• Connection to backbone

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  Miscellaneous

Reseller/Affiliate Program

Spam Policy

Offensive Site Policy (porn,hate,etc..)

Marketing Support

Search Engine Submission

Hosted Directory

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Web Hosting Glossary

Alias Mail Accounts - an ALIAS would be an email that actually doesn't have a user login/password. It's just forwarded to a POP account on the same server.

Apache - a powerful, flexible, HTTP/1.1 compliant web server
implements the latest protocols, including HTTP/1.1 (RFC2068)
is highly configurable and extensible with third-party modules can be customized by writing 'modules' using the Apache module API provides full source code and comes with an unrestrictive license runs on most versions of Unix without modification (from: http://www.apache.org/)

ASP - as pertaining to Web Pages - Active Server Pages - Microsoft's answer to Java, kind of...it runs on the server - not the client. Allows you to build really cool Web Pages that make it seem like there is a "personal interaction" with each and every user. Microsoft's site is done using them.

Auto responder: This is simply an address that sends back a pre-specified email when someone sends it a message.

Bandwidth - The total length of a drummer, 2 guitar players, and a bassist - oh wait...wrong list....

How much data you can send/receive simultaneously thru a connection - dialup modem connects are typically 14,000bps-56,000bps, ISDN is 64K or 128K, T1 is 1.544Mbps, DS3 is 45Mbps...and so on and so on...the amount of bandwidth you have is directly proportional to the depth of your pockets.

CGI - CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs. This allows the web server to interface with other software on the web server machine and perform actions such as taking a form input and emailing it to you. Not quite as powerful as telnet in most instances, but much more common for the web designer to use.

ChillisoftASP - Developed by Chili!Soft®, Inc., Chili!Soft® ASP based on Microsoft's® Active Server Pages (ASP) Internet development environment, but with the added ability to work across platforms allowing Web developers to easily build powerful database and component-driven applications. (for more see: http://www.chiliasp.com)/

Dial-up Services - Your modem dials your ISP - their modem answers...voila dial up service.  The ability to dial into the network (Sprint, AOL, anyone you use to dial into the internet)

Domains - something you are the master of, hopefully <grin>
In an NT environment, something you make users log into to enforce security and policy rules. In the internet - refers to a naming system that identifies individual sites (ftp/web/whatever) by name rather than IP address.

DS3 - DS3 is actually just a framing specification for a T3. That means that the T3 is the actual line (it carries around 45Mbps) and the DS3 spec just tells it how to carry it.

E-Commerce - The ability to do business online. Plain and simple. Commonly used as the ability to sell items online.

Online Shopping...something many people are still scared of; however more and more people are beginning to try E-Commerce and find they save time and money.

Fiber Optics - Well, this is usually only use on backbones and Sonet rings. This type if thing is just to look good.

Glass (or plastic) strands that transmit data via lightwave frequencies. Provide better security, transmission and reception than standard copper cable. Expensive. If you want to make lots of money learn how to splice this stuff and go to work for your local cable company. Be prepared to buy your own microscopes and such. Its very thin - but carries TONS of info.

FRAME - is a block of data (in this case the blocks - or more correctly, packets) that is specified by a header and a trailer - it basically tells the receiving equipment that is packet #37 (or whatever) of 3,000 (or whatever) total packets. Then, the receiving equipment can reassemble them all in the correct order.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol - allows you (and/or your users) to login to a remote server for the purpose of uploading/downloading files. Can be passworded, or anonymous.

GUI - Graphical User Interface - windows, win9x, WinNT, Macintosh are GUI interfaces - Unix and DOS are not.

ISO - Independent Service Organization. The organization you come to when you want to establish a merchant account for the internet or setup online real-time credit card transaction services for your site.

IIS - Internet Information Server. Web server software created by Microsoft. Free. Runs on NT. Hackers love to make it crash. Microsoft tries to fix all the holes in it, updates are available at their site.

Internet Backbone - The original "Internet backbone" was created by the NSF (National Science Foundation). It linked 5 supercomputer centers via very high-speed phone lines, so they could collaborate in "real-time". Since that time (20 years ago?) it is much more commercial, and many companies (AT&T,MCI, Compuserve, etc.) all own parts of this backbone. Basically - its the "big fat data pipes" that link all the little guys together. If you check the net - you're sure to find someone's recent map of "their" backbone...the original backbone is pretty much now just history...now, its all about who has the fastest links to the major POPs, and who has the most/best peers........

A set of paths that local or regional networks connect to for long-distance interconnection. The connection points are known as network nodes or telecommunication data switching exchanges (DSEs). A worldwide system of computer networks over which users from any one computer can exchange information with any other computer. Originally conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known as the ARPANet.

In the 1980's ARPANet was replaced by the Defense Data Network, a military network, and NSFNet, a network of scientific and academic computers. In 1995, NSFNet began to turn what has become the backbone of the Internet (called vBNS) over to several commercial backbone providers (PSINet, UUNET,ANS/AOL, Sprint, MCI, and AGIS-Net99). 

Internic - Internet Information Center - the guys who originally kept track of all the domains on the Internet - now they like to be called Network Solutions, Inc or NSI for short...they are now de-regulated so there is more than 1 player in the domain registration game these days.

IP Address - a 32 bit address used on the Internet. Similar to a home address or telephone number looks like this 123.123.123.123 Defined by the Internet Protocol

ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network - Basically, a digital modem that is faster and can carry voice simultaneously with data. Can be a real PItA to setup if you are in a hurry.

Mail Forwarding - allows your normal email (or some email - as you set it up) to forward somewhere else. Supposed to be used when you go on vacation and stuff. So, if mail gets received at yourbox@yourisp.com then it gets forwarded to something you can access remotely, easily - as in youremail@hotmail.com

Mail catch all - a type of forward/alias - used for email sent to your domain that is addressed to nonexistent persons, or is misspelled. Often, it is postmaster@yourdomain.com - but that is supposed to be for other purposes....

MBPS - Megabytes per second if capitalized "b".......otherwise megabits.........that's a million of either

MSQL - SQL was originally meant to be "Sequential Query Language" but actually - it means nothing - I can't remember why. It allows you to query a database and return results in a specified order. Can be simple or very complex. Not familiar with the M part of it.
MySQL. A SQL database for Unix and Windows.

MSP - Microsoft Solutions Provider - someone who spent a lot of time and money learning what all those things in your software's menus do. (Some of them are very good - I know a few who should be shot as they are total idiots...but apparently have high test-taking skills. This means very little in reality, but it might make a difference if you have no idea what the support level is like. At lease these people can call MS for free if there is a problem they can't handle (it doesn't always mean they can handle it themselves)

NT - Windows NT (by Microsoft, who else?) 32 bit operating system that manages memory better than DOS or Win9x. Also allows file-level security, and the ability to have a bunch of CPUs in your machine

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy...a form of public-key encryption used to keep your email (and other stuff) from prying eyes.

PHP - a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages. You create pages with PHP and HTML. When a visitor opens the page, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor's browser, just as with ASP or ColdFusion. Unlike ASP or ColdFusion, however,PHP is Open Source and cross-platform. PHP runs on Windows NT and many Unix versions, and it can be built as an Apache module and as a binary that can run as a CGI. When built as an Apache module, PHP is especially lightweight and speedy. Without any process creation overhead, it can return results quickly, but it doesn't require the tuning of mod_perl to keep your server's memory image small.

Ping- Ping is a thing you can do to a server (or any machine on a network/the internet). It will send some packets (by default 32 bytes of data) to that machine and will tell you how long it took them to get there (in milliseconds) and if they all got there, or how many were lost. It will also tell you the IP address of that site (provided it is an actual site). To check it out - go to your dos window and type ping santaclaus.com It will give you some info. Its not a valid check of how fast a site is - as it may take a different route to get there every single time. However, if it always takes a long time to ping a site, then the site IS in a heavily congested area - stay away from that server.

POP3-  A pop account is a mail account that stores data on the sever and can be retrieved via the POP3 protocol. A alias is simply another name people can use to send mail to the pop account. It is a simple process to setup an alias. If you have your own domain, a host should always offer "unlimited" aliases, since all addresses at a given domain can be aliases to one account.

Real Audio - Different than fake audio? Sound format used commonly on the web. Suffixed by .ra or .ram Plays streams live. A sound file format. Real Audio can also be used to provide "streaming" audio where the audio is played as it is being downloaded. (The latest RA does not require a server side piece, so this should be a given)

Redundancy - Redundancy is different than backups, usually. It refers to backbone support - as you surmise. Don't be fooled though. Often, an ISP will claim redundancy without really knowing what the hell they are talking about. Typically - redundant cables (lets say T1 for simplicity sake) means that the ISP has 2 incoming feeds (one which is supposed to be only for backups) that are from different providers. Say, they get a t1 from MCI and one from Sprint...that way if someone backhoes the MCI T1 then everything auto-switches to the Sprint T1. Note however, that often these "different providers" use each others cables or other facilities- they just lease them. So, if both Sprint and MCI T1's are "tied together" in a Telco hotel in Minnesota - and some crazed lunatic blows it up - so much for your redundant cable. Also, since cable laying is expensive, and hard to get authorized - redundancy is often vertical redundant, meaning that the first T1 is buried 3' deep next to the railroad track, and the "redundant" cable is laid a foot below it. This offers decent "backhoe protection", but offers no protection against drilling.

True redundancy is rare - usually used in true SONET rings, in which 1 cable comes in the East side of a building, from the East, and the other from the West, on the West Side of the building. Chances are slim that 2 drills/backhoes will hit both cables at exactly the same time. Its also very expensive and out of the reach of the little guys. Used mostly in Telco and ATM (not the bank machines) stuff.

SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (also often thought to be Sendmail Transfer Protocol - but that's wrong) A common set of rules that allow a program sending and a program receiving email to interact with each other The SMTP server is the outgoing mail server.

SSI - Server side includes (SSI)s applied to an HTML document, provide for interactive real-time features such as echoing current time, conditional execution based on logical comparisons, querying or updating a database, sending an email, etc., with no programming or CGI scripts. An SSI consists of a special sequence of characters (tokens) on an HTML page. As the page is sent from the HTTP server to the requesting client, the page is scanned by the server for these special tokens. When a token is found the server interprets the data in the token and performs an action based on the token data.

SSL - Secure Socket Layer - designed by Netscape - allows secure, encrypted, authenticated transmission on the internet

Storage - The amount of disk space you can use for storing your site. Since I have rarely seen a site that uses more than 50MB, unless they had software to download (in which case you also need to worry about traffic), many ISP's will boost the "given" space to 100 or 150 MB just to make it look like you are getting more, knowing that most won't use it, and hoping you don't.

Sub domain - Term commonly used to define 2 different features :
1. Sub directory or space located under a main domain, for instance, http://www.main_domain.com/~sub-domain This sub domain does not have to be registered with Internic and shares the space and features provided to the main or root domain. Does not have its own IP address.

2. A separate domain that does have its own IP address under a main domain. This allows a web developer to allocate specified amounts of storage space from a main domain to a sub domain. A sub domain often has its own private files and access to those files, but shares bandwidth and storage space with the main domain.

T1/T3 - These are network access speeds. T1=1.45 MB/sec T3=45MB/sec. It is possible (and common) to have a "partial" T1 or T3. This also does not guarantee that you will have fast access. If they have large sites sucking up the bandwidth, you are SOL. Make sure you check out several sites hosted by them at various times of the day and during the week. Some sites may have certain times they are heavily hit.

SONET - Synchronous Optical Network: a standard that allows fiber optic equipment to work with other manufacturers equipment

Telnet - Remote login to a server offering many more commands than FTP. You basically have command line control of the remote computer. You can execute files, upload, download and do all kinds of things. Most ISP's will lock-out any commands that may cause them or their customers harm - so feel free to experiment. Remember - you will most likely be in a UNIX environment during telnet - so things can get pretty weird if you're used to a GUI environment.

This allows you to access the server via a telnet program. This will drop you to a command prompt on the server and allow you to run any commands/programs you have been grated access to. If you are hosting on a NT server, this will most likely not be offered. Most people do not need or care about this. However, advance users like this on the Unix side.

Traffic - This is usually specified in MB or GB transferred per month, although may be specified in other terms such as "hits" or something. This includes everything in your directories that gets served to anyone - graphics, sounds, videos, text, warez, whatever...every little bit adds up -if you are running hard-hit sites (usually offering files or porn) then pay attention to how much you are allowed to transfer out/in as if it goes over that amount - it can get real costly real fast.

It also refers to the amount of "traffic" on a server. If you have a small 5 page site that loads fast - and you host your site on the same server (and/or same "pipe") as a site such as a porno site - their traffic will cause your performance to suffer. Try not to host your site where adult material is allowed just for this reason.

The amount of data transferred. This is the total amount of data per page times the number of times read (example: if you have a page totaling 10k, including images) and it is viewed 12 times, you have reached 1MB of traffic (1MB = 1024K)) You might want to make sure that the ISP isn't using the "common" MB, or 1MB=1000K. Most sites that are strict will have systems that do the monitoring and will use the 1MB=1024K

Web Host - the company that lets you place your HTML/graphics/etc. on their machines and use their bandwidth for a fee, or in exchange for placing banner ads. Anyone who is able to server web pages.

Whois - an internet program that lets you get details on a person by entering their domain name or email address, or name

Virtual Hosting - Some ISP's use this to say they offer a "sub domain", and others simply use it (more correctly) to define that they use 1 IP address for multiple sites.  The idea behind this is that your browser will send the domain name as part of the header to the server. The server will read what domain name you are looking for an send back the correct data. For the most part, most people do not need a dedicated IP address.