| Set-up
Fee: |
This
is the fee web hosting companies charge for setting up your account and
domain. Basically, it is a labour fee for the transfer or set-up of your
new account with them. Some companies do not have set-up fees, but they
make up for this in other areas, such as raising their monthly rates or
by offering fewer features in a given plan. |
| Disk
Storage: |
Disk
storage is the space on the web hosting company's servers (or computers)
that your web site's content is allowed to utilize. For example, on the
computer you are using now, it has a certain amount of disk space on its
hard drive. It may be anywhere from 3000 MB to 6000 MB (or 3G to 6G). One
of your programs on that computer may take up 15 MB of storage space on
your C drive. Web hosting companies' servers work the same way. They allow
each of their customers a certain amount of disk space to store their web
site material on, such as images, HTML files, emails, etc. 125 MB is a very
large amount of space for a web site. Most web sites only take up 3 - 10
MB, if that. But you will want to have sufficient storage space in the event
that you need it, so it never hurts to have more than enough. |
| Data
Transfer or Bandwidth: |
This
is the amount of data that your web hosting company's server has to load
each time someone visits your site, and/or each time you upload images or
files via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). For example, each time someone visits
Amazon.com, the servers that host Amazon.com has to load those pages for
each of those persons visiting the page. It is actually the 'transfer' of
the data that you see in front of you. Most web hosting companies offer
unlimited data transfer because 970/0 of their clients do not abuse their
servers with outrageous data transfers anyway. But most of the sites that
offer unlimited data transfer also have rules in place that prevent customers
from abusing their system. You must read the fine print in every *unlimited*
plan that you encounter to make sure you do not break their rules. |
| FTP
Accounts (with 24hr FTP access): |
An
FTP Account allows you to upload your web site and content onto your web
hosting company's servers so that visitors can see your site. FTP stands
for File Transfer Protocol which basically means that files are being transferred
over the Internet. There are many free programs out there that allow you
to do this with ease, such as WS FIP and the Microsoft Web Wizard which
comes with just about every Windows 98 computer. The 24-hour FTP access
means that you can upload files and/or images to your web site at anytime
of the day or night. |
| Up-time: |
Up
time is the amount of time that a web site remains live or active and without
problems loading pages, etc. A 99.9% up time means that there is a .1% chance
that your site will go "down" in the event that something happens to the
server your site is sitting on or something happens to the connection along
the way. A 99.9% up-time is just about as good as it gets in web hosting,
which isn't bad at all. You should never settle for anything less than a
99.90/0 up time even it it's 99.70/0 or 99.80/a. All companies should be
equipped with the tools needed to keep your site up and running at least
99.9% of the time. |
| POP3
E-mail Boxes: |
POP3
Email Boxes are the 'actual' email accounts that you receive with your plan.
25 different people within your organization or company can have their own
email accounts with their own logins. |
| E-mail
Autoresponders: |
These
are the messages that you create that will automatically be mailed back
to those that email you by addressing a particular address on your site.
For instance, your site may have a help email address listed on the site
for those that need help with the site or that have a question. The address
will be on the site as support@yourcompany.com. You can set up a message
that is automatically sent to those that send email to that email address
to let them know their email was received. It could say something like this:
"Thank you for contacting 'Your Company.' A member of our support team will
reply to you as soon as possible." |
| E-Mail
Aliases: |
E-mail
aliases are just the words that you place in front have @yourcompany.com
to create unique email addresses. These aliases are then set up by you to
forward to whatever address you want them to forward to. For example, you
can set up an alias at your site called sales@yourcompany.com (if you do
not have an actual email account under this name). Then you could set up
this alias to forward to 2 or 3 people in your sales department with real
POP3 email accounts. You can put any word you want in front of your company
to be an alias. The servers are set up to send all email that ends in @yourcompany.com
to your main default Pop3 email account regardless of what that word is.
Even if you do not set up an alias to be forwarded to specific addresses
in your organization, the email will by default go to the 'main' email account
of your web site's plan. Note: Aliases are NOT actual email accounts, they
are only addresses that point an email to an actual email account or accounts.
|
| MS
FrontPage Support: |
MS
FrontPage is a program that many companies use to publish their web site.
If you use MS FrontPage to publish your web site, you need to go with a
web hosting company that supports MS FrontPage. |
| Detailed
Web Statistics (WebTrends): |
Every
web site should have access to their site's traffic and visitor statistics.
This is very important in monitoring the success of your web site. With
web site statistics, you can see how many people visit your site per day,
month, or by the hour. You can see where these visitors are coming from
and what web sites or search engines are referring them. You can see what
pages are the most popular pages within your site, and so much more. No
web site should be without statistics. This is also valuable information
to those that inquire about advertising on your site. |
| CGI
Bin (Local Directory): |
CGI
Bins are used to hold any scripts that run on your web site, such as the
scripts needed to run interactive pages such as message boards, guestbooks,
or email forms. The local directory means that you will have your own directory
for your scripts and not a shared directory. |
| Web
Control Panel: |
The
web control panel allows you to control your web site functions, such as
setting up email aliases and autoresponders, creating new email accounts,
viewing your disk storage, or reviewing your billing statements, and much,
much more. You sign into these Web Control Panels with your user ID and
password. |
