A guide to website hosting terminology
Confused by web hosting industry technical jargon and terms? This web hosting guide provides valuable information to help you make an informed decision about your web hosting requirements. If you are just getting started with hosting, one of our value hosting plans will deliver outstanding features at an affordable price.
Here are the key components of a hosting package, and what they mean to you and your site:
Hard Disk Storage
This is the space you have to store your site. Every website is stored on a webserver, which is the computer that broadcasts your site to your visitors. Your hard disk storage is how much space you are allocated on that server's hard drive. Even most robust websites don't require more than 10 megs of space, but having more is a nice luxury for storing pictures, video, and graphics.
Monthly Transfer (also called bandwidth)
This is the total amount of data (including graphics, HTML web pages, video, etc) which can be uploaded and downloaded from your site each month. It is a rough estimator of how many visitors your hosting plan can accommodate. For example, on an average size with a moderate amount of graphics, it has been our experience that 1000 megabytes (MB) of transfer can accommodate well over 5,000 visitors per month. Some web hosts claim to offer "unlimited bandwidth" which is not really possible. Not only are they likely to pack your site on an overloaded server and connection, but if you read the fine print there are always "excessive use penalties" which are arbitrary and costly. In contrast, we insure your site always gets the resources you pay for to make it fast and reliable with no hidden charges.
POP3 Email Accounts
These are email accounts which can be used with your account. They allow you to receive and read email via our easy web interface or with a number of popular mail clients. Please visit our support center for more information on configuring your email client of choice.
Unlimited updates via FTP
We allow you to update your site 24x7 using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Client. This is a program which allows you to connect to our server and upload your files. We recommend WS_FTP which is both powerful and simple to use. It can be found at ipswitch.com.
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