Web hosting jargon, explained
Every term you will run into buying or using hosting, defined in a sentence or two, with a link to the longer explanation where there is one worth reading.
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Grouped by when you will need them
Hosting has an unusually large vocabulary for something conceptually simple, partly because it accumulated over thirty years and partly because vagueness is commercially useful. Most of the terms below describe something quite ordinary once translated.
They are grouped by where you will meet them: buying hosting, connecting a domain, putting files on the server, and keeping it working.
Terms on a hosting sales page
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Many accounts on one server, sharing its CPU, memory and disk. Cheap, and suitable for most small sites. Your files stay private; the hardware is shared. Explained properly. |
| VPS | A virtual private server — a guaranteed slice of a machine with root access. More power and more responsibility; you administer it yourself. |
| Managed hosting | Hosting where the provider also looks after the website software, not just the server. Typically five to twenty times the price of shared hosting. |
| Bandwidth / transfer | How much data is sent to visitors per month. Driven by page weight multiplied by page views. How to estimate yours. |
| Inodes | A count of files and folders, not their size. Some hosts limit it. A WordPress site with plugins can hold tens of thousands of small files, which is how people hit an inode limit with a tiny site. |
| Uptime | The percentage of time the service is reachable. Meaningful only alongside how it is measured and what a breach actually pays. |
| Control panel | The dashboard for managing hosting. cPanel and DirectAdmin are the two industry standards. Compared. |
| Softaculous | A one-click application installer built into many panels. It creates the database and configuration so you do not have to. |
Terms when connecting an address
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Registrar | The company you buy a domain name from and where its registration is held. |
| Nameserver | The server that answers where a domain points. Your registrar lists them; changing host usually means changing them. |
| DNS | The Domain Name System — the directory translating names into server addresses. Plain-English guide. |
| A record | A DNS record pointing a name at an IP address. More. |
| CNAME | A DNS record pointing one name at another name rather than at an address. More. |
| MX record | The DNS record saying where email for a domain should be delivered. More. |
| TXT record | A free-text DNS record, used for verification and for email authentication such as SPF and DKIM. More. |
| Propagation | The delay while a DNS change spreads. Usually under an hour, occasionally longer. Why. |
| Subdomain | A prefix on your domain — blog.example.com — that can point at a different folder or a different site entirely. |
Terms when uploading a site
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| public_html | The folder your site is served from. Files outside it are not published. More. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol — the traditional way to upload files. Unencrypted. |
| SFTP | The same job over an encrypted connection. Prefer it. Difference. |
| File manager | A browser-based file browser in the control panel. Convenient for small changes and for when you do not have an FTP client to hand. |
| File permissions | Numbers such as 644 and 755 controlling who may read, write or execute a file. Wrong permissions produce 403 errors or, worse, security problems. More. |
| .htaccess | A per-directory Apache configuration file used for redirects, rewrite rules and access control. |
| Database | Where a CMS stores content, users and settings — separately from the files. Both are needed to move a site. |
| phpMyAdmin | A browser interface for managing MySQL databases. More. |
Terms when something goes wrong
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| SSL / TLS certificate | What enables HTTPS and the padlock. Free from Let's Encrypt and included as standard by any modern host. More. |
| Mixed content | An HTTPS page loading some resources over HTTP, which removes the padlock. How to fix. |
| Cron job | A scheduled task run by the server at set intervals, independent of visitors. |
| PHP version | Which release of PHP runs your site. Newer is faster and supported for longer. More. |
| Error log | The file where the server records what went wrong. The first place to look for any problem. Common entries. |
| 500 error | A generic server-side failure. The log entry tells you the actual cause. Diagnosing. |
| 404 error | The requested page does not exist at that address. Diagnosing. |
| Backup | A copy of files and database. Only counts as a backup if it is somewhere other than the server it came from. |
The four most-asked definitions
What is public_html?
The folder your website is served from. Files inside it are visible on the web; files outside it are not. It is the single most common cause of a new site showing a blank page or a directory listing — the files were uploaded next to it rather than inside it.
What is a nameserver?
A server that answers the question “where does this domain point?”. Your registrar stores the nameservers for your domain; the nameservers store the actual records. Changing hosts usually means changing which nameservers your registrar lists.
What is the difference between FTP and SFTP?
Both transfer files to your hosting. SFTP encrypts the connection and FTP does not, which means plain FTP sends your password in the clear. Use SFTP where it is offered. The longer explanation.
What does 'shared hosting' actually share?
The physical server and its resources — CPU, memory, disk and network — between many accounts. Your files and databases are separate and private; the hardware is not. It is why shared hosting is cheap and why resource limits exist.
Keep reading
Knowledge base
Sixty-four articles going considerably deeper than these definitions.
Hosting for Beginners
Which of these terms actually matter when you are starting.
Your First Website
The terms above, in the order you will meet them.
DNS Explained
The longest-form explanation of the trickiest section above.
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