The Internet can be a confusing place, and many people find themselves intimidated and sometimes even lost in all of the technical jargon used by webmasters, developers and technical staff. To assist you in your quest for understanding the internet, we have put together an interactive glossary of terms commonly used by the cyberspace community.

We hope you find this useful, but if you have any further questions about a term that we missed, let us know and we will be more than happy to help!

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Acquiring Bank: An acquiring bank provides merchants with Internet Merchant Accounts.

Active Server Page (ASP): An HTML page that contains embedded scripts. ASPs are especially useful for storing and retrieving information in an online database.

Administrative FTP: A type of FTP access that allows someone with your administrator user name and password to have complete access to your Web server's files through an FTP client.

Administrator: The individual responsible for administering and maintaining your Virtual Server. As the owner of the VServer NT system, this individual should be yourself or someone you've designated to act in this role.

Adobe Flash Player: A web browser plugin that allows the end user to view Flash content.

Adobe Reader/Adobe Acrobat: Free software that enables users to view files in Adobe PDF format.

Aliasing (redirecting): The redirecting of email from one address to another address or multiple addresses. Aliases are typically used in place of actual addresses that are long or subject to change. Aliases also allow you to create a larger, more professional company image.

Anonymous FTP: A type of FTP access that allows a person to connect to your Web server with an FTP client and retrieve files from the user/home/username/ftp/pub directory of your Web server without the need for a username and password. Optionally, anonymous FTP can be configured to allow users to send files to your Web server on a directory-by-directory basis.

Auto-Responder: An automated program on your VServer NT that can be configured to return a prewritten response to all mail sent to a particular email alias.

Autoreply Message: A pre-written email response triggered by an Auto-Responder.

Return to top

BMP or Bitmap: Bitmap images are an uncompressed file format. They are rich in color but the image size is large and cannot be viewed within all web browsers. The Bitmap is Microsoft's native graphic file format, and thus highly compatible with any Microsoft application.

Bounced Message: A returned, undeliverable email message.

Certification Authority: A "trusted third-party" organization which is used to confirm the relationship between a party to the https transaction and that party's public key.

Cookies:

Digital Certificate or Digital ID: Used to present credentials online, Digital Certificates are issued by companies that act as "trusted third parties." A Digital Certificate is digitally "signed" by a certification authority so that none of the details can be changed without invalidating the signature.

Directory: A directory can contain a collection of files, other directories, or both.

Domain name: A name that resolves or points to an IP address. Domain names are used to more easily identify a computer or site on the Internet.

Download: To retrieve a file from an online service such as your NT server.

DSN: Data Source Name. A name that references your database in your ASP applications.

Return to top

E-Commerce: The conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computers. As most restrictively defined, electronic commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, and the transfer of funds, through digital communications.

Email (Electronic Mail): An Internet service that allows you to send and receive messages from one computer to another.

Email Account: Allows a user to receive and store email messages. These messages then can be retrieved, read, forwarded, replied to and deleted through an email client program.

Email Address: A unique address that allows email messages to be sent to or retrieved from an email account. Email addresses consist of a username, an @ symbol, and a domain name.

Email Client: A program that can retrieve email from an email account, allowing a user to read, forward, delete, and reply to email messages. Microsoft Outlook is a common email client.

Encryption: The process of scrambling a message for secure transaction.

Extranet: The extension of a company's intranet out onto the Internet, e.g. to allow selected customers, suppliers and mobile workers to access the company's private data and applications via the Worldwide Web. This is in contrast to, and usually in addition to, the company's public web site, which is typically accessible to everyone. The difference can be somewhat blurred but generally an extranet implies real-time access through a firewall of some kind. Such facilities require very careful attention to security but are becoming an increasingly important means of delivering services and communicating efficiently.

Return to top

Flash: Flash is a platform for rich content such as animations, user interfaces, and web applications. It is compatible with most operating systems and browsers, and requires Adobe Flash
Player to view.

Flash Player: see Adobe Flash Player

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. A resource for transferring files between a server and a client across an Internet connection.

FTP Client: A program that uses FTP to connect to a server and transfer files to and from the server.

GIF: GIF images use a fixed color palette limited to 256 colors - not the full spectrum of colors available on a PC - but this compression results in smaller files and faster downloads. Additionally, with GIF files, you can designate a color to be transparent or interlace the image so that it appears to download faster. For these reasons, GIF images are a popular solution for the Web, especially images with solid or uniform colors like illustrations, logos, and buttons.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language. A language that is used to create documents for the World Wide Web. HTML documents are also called Web pages, and are easily formatted by a Web browser for quick display.

Hostname, or "site name": The unique name by which a computer is known on a network, used to identify it in electronic mail, Usenet news, or other forms of electronic information interchange.

HTTP: (Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The protocol that makes it possible for Web browsers and Web servers to communicate with one other, HTTP is used between a Web browser and a server to request a document and transfer its contents. The specification is maintained and developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.

HTTPS: https is ordinary http exchanged over an SSL-encrypted session.

Return to top

IMAP: Internet Message Access Protocol. A mail protocol that allows an email client to retrieve copies of email messages, yet still store them on your UNIX server until you delete them. By default, IMAP clients download only the header information of new messages and then download copies of the messages themselves upon request.

Internet: The (I)nternet is the largest internet (with a small "i") in the world. It is a three level hierarchy composed of backbone networks (e.g. ARPAnet, NSFNet, MILNET), mid-level networks, and stub networks. These include commercial (.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other research networks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and span many different physical networks around the world with various protocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol. Until the advent of the Worldwide Web in 1990, the Internet was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate research departments and was accessed mostly via command line interfaces such as telnet and FTP. Since then it has grown to become an almost-ubiquitous aspect of modern information systems, becoming highly commercial and a widely accepted medium for all sort of customer relations such as advertising, brand building, and online sales and services.

Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom has, to a great extent, survived this explosive transformation with the result that the vast majority of information available on the Internet is free of charge.

Internet Merchant Account (IMA): An Internet Merchant Account enables a merchant to accept credit cards over the Internet. IMAs can be obtained through an acquiring bank.

Intranet: Any network that provides similar services within an organization to those provided by the Internet outside it but which is not necessarily connected to the Internet. The most common example is the use by a company of one or more Worldwide Web servers on an internal TCP/IP network for distribution of information within the company. Since about 1995, intranets have become a major growth area in corporate computing due to the availability of cheap or free commercial browser and web server software, which allows them to provide a simple, uniform hypertext interface to many kinds of information and application programs. Some companies give limited access to their intranets to other companies or the general public. This is known as an extranet.

IP Address: A numerical address that identifies a computer on the Internet. It takes the form of four numbers, up to three digits each, separated by periods.

Return to top

Java: Java is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the World Wide Web. Small Java applications are called Java applets and can be downloaded from a Web server and run on your computer by a Java-compatible Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Javascript: A scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to design interactive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently. Javascript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content.

JPG or JPEG: JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group and is used for graphics that contain a multitude of colors and gradations - like photographic images. Unlike GIF, which supports only 256 colors, the JPEG format supports the full spectrum available to your PC and allows for graphic compression as well. The compression is not as great as the GIF image so the resulting file is slightly larger. The JPEG format can be saved at various levels of compression or "lossless" compression and is supported by both Mac and PC operating systems.

Logging In: The process of identifying yourself to your server through a username and password.

Merchant: A merchant is any person or business that accepts credit cards over the Internet.

ODBC Driver: An ODBC driver acts as a "translator" between an application and a database.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC): A protocol developed by Microsoft that allows applications to interact seamlessly with databases.

Return to top

Parent Directory: A directory that contains other directories.

Password: A security measure to prevent other people from accessing your server or information without your permission. Only someone who knows the correct username and password can administer your server.

PCX: The PCX image format was developed by ZSoft Corporation for the PC Paintbrush product family. This format is widely used on IBM PC-compatible computers. It is a very simple format that uses Run Length Encoding (RLE) to compress the image data, but not a common solution for Internet images.

PDF: This Adobe file type stands for Portable Document Format. It is used to capture all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that you can view, navigate, print, or forward to someone else. PDF files are especially useful for documents such as magazine articles, product brochures, or flyers in which you want to preserve the original graphic appearance online. They can be viewed using Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

PICT: The PICT image format was developed by Apple Computer. PICT files are encoded in QuickDraw commands and can hold both object-oriented and bit-mapped images. It is supported by all graphics programs running on Macintosh computers and currently supports 32-bit (16 million) colors. PICT images are not common for Internet use.

Plugin: A piece of software that adds a specific feature or service to a larger system or piece of software . For example, there are a variety of plugins available for the Internet Explorer web browser that enable the user to view different types of content, such as Flash or Quicktime.

PNG: PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics. The PNG format, some anticipated, would eventually replace the GIF format. PNG was developed by an Internet committee expressly to be patent-free, since software that created GIF files required licensing by third party vendors like CompuServe and AOL. Typically a PNG image can be 10 to 30% more compressed than in a GIF format.

POP (Post Office Protocol): A mail protocol that allows an email client to retrieve email messages from your mail server. Mail is held until the account is accessed, at which time the mail is transferred to the user's computer and deleted from the mail server, unless instructed otherwise by the user's email client.

Private Key: The part of a key pair that is kept secret and is used only by its owner. This is the key used for decrypting messages and for making digital signatures.

Protocol: A protocol is an algorithm, or step by step procedure, carried out by more than one party. Examples are network protocols, in which the steps are intended to ensure reliable transmission of information, or cryptographic protocols, in which the aim is to maintain some form of security relationship between the parties.

Public Key: The part of a key pair that is widely distributed, and is not kept secure. This is the key used for encryption (as opposed to decryption) or for verifying signatures.

Return to top

Quicktime: A video and animation system developed by Apple Computer. QuickTime is built into the Macintosh operating system and is used by most Mac applications that include video or animation. PCs can also run files in QuickTime format, but they require a special QuickTime driver.

Redirecting: See Aliasing.

Shopping cart: A shopping cart is an online catalog that allows a shopper to add items to a virtual basket, or cart. A running total is kept as the shopper adds and removes items from the cart.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A method for sending mail from an email client through your mail server to a recipient, or from your mail server to another destination on the Internet.

SPAM: Unsolicited commercial email, usually sent indiscriminately in large amounts, to discussion groups or subscriber bases. The VServers Service Agreement strictly prohibits "Spamming," the process of sending unsolicited email.

SPAM Relay: The practice of sending large amounts of unsolicited email through someone else's outbound mail server.

SSL: Secure Socket Layer. A protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting data via the Internet, in order to protect the data from being intercepted by someone other than the intended viewer. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data that's transferred over the SSL connection. Most browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, support SSL. It is often used to securely transfer credit card numbers and other sensitive information. By convention, Web pages that require an SSL connection start with https rather than http.

Subdirectory: A directory within another directory.

Return to top

Telnet: A service that allows you to access your server from a remote computer and issue text commands. It is similar to a DOS environment, but the text commands given are unique to the UNIX environment.

TIFF: Stands for Tag Image File Format and is one of the most widely supported graphic file formats. It is a common format for exchanging bitmapped images between applications especially for scanning purposes. TIFF files are commonly used in desktop publishing, faxing, 3-D applications, and medical imaging applications. Graphics saved in TIFF format can be easily opened on both Macintosh and PC/Windows platforms.

UNIX: An operating system specifically designed to facilitate multiple users and networking.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator. An address that identifies a specific file on the Internet. URLs follow a standardized format that consists of a protocol type, a domain name or IP address identifying the computer that contains the file, and a path to the file.

Username: A name given to your virtual server so that the physical machine it resides on can identify it. You enter this username when logging in.

Return to top

VeriSign: VeriSign is the dominant certification authority on the Internet at the present time.

Virtual server: A directory on a server that has its own Internet address and appears as a standalone server to outside users.

Web browser: A program that allows you to view files on a web server from your computer.

Web server: A computer connected to the Internet that stores files and makes them available to the public.

Web site: A collection of linked files on a web server.

WWW (World Wide Web): An Internet client-server hypertext distributed information retrieval system, which originated from the CERN High-Energy Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. An extensive user community has developed on the Web since its public introduction in 1991. In the early 1990s, the developers at CERN spread word of the Web's capabilities to scientific audiences worldwide. By September 1993, the share of Web traffic traversing the NSFNET Internet backbone reached 75 gigabytes per month or one percent. By July 1994 it was one terabyte per month.

On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indices) is represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML format. These files contain information, pictures, sounds, and other media and can be easily viewed through a client program called a Web browser. When most people refer to the Internet, they are actually referring to the World Wide Web

Return to top