Microsoft's application for creation and maintaining databases. It is commonly used by developers who maintain online databases running on Windows NT.

ActiveX is a set of properties that specify in what way applications share information with each other. These properties are known as ActiveX Controls.

An aliased nameserver is one that has been labeled as your own except that it is actually owned by your web hosting provider. This allows domains hosted on your server are listed as "ns.your-domain.com" rather than "ns.your-providers-domain.com". Aliased nameservers are often offered with reseller accounts.

A web server program. Apache is one of the world's most popular web server programs, it was built and is maintained by a group of open source programmers and it is often used because of it's excellent performance, security features and that it is free.

(Active Server Pages) Active Server Pages are HTML documents that are typically embedded with Microsoft Visual Basic scripts or Jscript. These scripts are processed by the server before being served to the user.

The amount of data that can be transferred at a given moment to or from a server. The larger the bandwidth value the higher amount of traffic your site can handle at one time.

(Country Code Top Level Domain) - "servwise.com.au" is this site's Australian top level domain, with the suffix being ".com.au". Other suffixes include ".co.uk", ".it" and ".fr".

Short for Common Gateway Interface, a script that processes data supplied by the user, such as in a form application.

This is the directory on a web server where CGI scripts are stored.

A cookie is a text file sent from a web server to a user's web browser. Cookies are typically sent back and forth between between the two in order to exchange data such as registration information, or to prepare custom content to the user.

This hosting feature allows a web site to have its own server. It is more flexible than shared hosting as webmasters have full control of the server, including choice of operating system. Server administration is still taken care of by the hosting provider.

Domain names are the words users enter into the address bar of their browser to visit a site. These domain names are attached to a DNS. The DNS (Domain Naming System) is used to translate these domain names into IP addresses. Each web site on the Internet has an IP address behind the name.

A firewall is a software application designed to protect web servers. They are typically used to protect web servers from attacks or unauthorized access.

A popular application designed by Macromedia. Flash is widely used on the Internet as it requires little bandwidth, which makes it friendly to users with low speed connections.

A site design and management application created by Microsoft.

(File Transfer Protocol) - A method to allow users and web servers to transfer files.

(HyperText Markup Language) - The language used by web browsers and web servers to communicate. Server side operations such as database processing, while maybe performed in a different language must all be output back to the web browser in HTML to be viewed.

(HyperText Transfer Protocol) - The protocol used to tranfer HTML files across the Internet. HTTP requires a client browser and a HTTP server.

(Internet Information Server) - Microsoft's server software for Windows NT/2000/2003.

A large internal network structured in a similar way to the Internet. Intranets are typically established by large corporate organizations to help communications within the organization. The difference between the Internet and an Intranet is that the latter is restricted to authorized users only.

(Internet Protocol) - This designates the format of data packets that are used to transfer information over the Internet.

(Internet Relay Chat) - A popular text based multi-user chat network.

A dedicated server that is supplied with a full suite of technical support, setup, maintenance and monitoring services. Managed Hosting differs from Dedicated Hosting where customers are provided with their own server but still have to take care of all the administrative duties related to the server.

A server responsible for translating domain names to IP addresses.

All domain names when newly purchased need to be stored on a server. Most domain registrars will temporarily place the new domain on their servers until the new owner changes the DNS to point to a different site. While the domain is in this temporary location the domain is known to be parked.

(Post Office Protocol) - An email protocol that mail software such as Microsoft's Outlook Express use to communicate with email servers.

(Redundant Array of Independant Disks) - A method of data protection. Data is stored over a number of disks (typically hard drives) so that the information will still be available if a disk fails.

A reseller is an operation that on-sells another companies hosting services. Typically the hosting company will provide the infrastructure and equipment, and the reseller finds the customers to use the hosting companies service. Some resellers operate as an entire hosting business supplying the hardware, software, network and technical support of another hosting company, while others simply work as sales agents for other web hosting companies.

This is the standard type of web hosting package. With shared hosting numerous web sites are sharing a single server. Shared hosting is an economic solution for the use by the majority of web sites without high storage or bandwidth requirements.

An application designed to take care of the e-commerce section of a web site. Shopping cart software allows users to browse for products and purchase them online.

(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - A protocol to allow mail servers to exchange messages with each other.

(Standard Query Language) - A protocol used to request information from databases. Servers which can handle SQL are known as SQL servers.

(Secure Sockets Layer) - A protocol developed by Netscape to handle and protect confidential information required for E-commerce transactions such as credit card numbers and other personal details. SSL addresses typically begin with "https".

Generally known as a "Domain within a Domain", subdomains are web addresses built upon an existing domain name. For example, "subdomain.domain.com" is built upon "domain.com".

A command line interface that allows remote users to communicate with web servers.

(Top Level Domain) - "servwise.com" is this site's top level domain, with the suffix being ".com". Other suffixes include ".net", ".org" and ".info".