Glossary of Internet Terms

This list of terms is provided to help you understand Web site hosting:

Browser
A program (software) that is used to look at web sites and other kinds of Internet resources. For example: Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape are both browsers.

DNS -- (Domain Name System)
The Domain Name System is the system that translates Internet domain names into IP numbers. A "DNS Server" is a server that performs this kind of translation.

Domain Name
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the specific web site name, and the part on the right is generally the type of website. For Example:

Nantucket.net and NantucketWeddings.com are both Domain Names.

Download
Transferring data (usually a file) from another computer or from the Internet to the computer you are are using. The opposite of upload.

FTP -- (File Transfer Protocol)
FTP is a way to login to an Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files such as images and/or web site pages. A user name and password are required to upload files to your web site.

GIF -- (Graphic Interchange Format)
A common format for image files, especially suitable for images that are not photographs. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.

Hit
As used in reference to the World Wide Web, 'hit' means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 'hits' would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics.

Home Page (or Homepage)
The opening or main page out of a web site.

Host
Any computer that is a repository for Web sites to make them available to the Internet It is quite common to have one host machine provide several services, such as SMTP (email) as well as HTTP (web). Nantucket.net hosts many web sites.

HTML -- (HyperText Markup Language)
The most common coding language used to create web site pages. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a "Web Browser".

HTTP -- (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
The protocol for moving hypertextfiles across the Internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program (such as Apache) on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web (WWW).

internet (Lower case i)
Any time you connect 2 or more networks together, you have an internet - as in inter-national or inter-state.

Internet (Upper case I)
The vast collection of inter-connected networks that are connected using the TCP/IP protocols The Internet connects tens of thousands of independent networks into a vast global internet and is probably the largest Wide Area Network in the world.

Intranet
A private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use.

IP Number -- (Internet Protocol Number)
A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.

201.22.22.2

Every web site has a unique IP number. The Domain Name is the common name that is used for the IP address.

ISP -- (Internet Service Provider)
An institution that provides access to the Internet in some form. Nantucket.net is an ISP.

JPEG -- (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG is most commonly mentioned as a format for photographic image files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.

Login
Noun or a verb.

Noun: The account name used to gain access to a closed system. Not a secret (contrast with Password).
Verb: the act of connecting to a computer system by giving your credentials (usually your "username" and "password")

Meta Tag
A specific kind of HTML tag that contains information not normally displayed to the user. Meta tags contan information about the page itself, hence the name ("meta" means "about this subject") Typical uses of Meta tags are to include information for search engines to help them better categorize a page. You can see the Meta tags in a page if you view the pages' source code.

Password
A code used to gain access (login) to a locked system. Good passwords contain letters and non-letters and are not simple combinations.

PDF -- (Portable Document Format)
A file format designed to enable printing and viewing of documents with all their formatting (typefaces, images, layout, etc.) appearing the same regardless of what operating system is used, so a PDF document should look the same on Windows, Macintosh, linux, OS/9, etc. The PDF format is based on the widely used Postcript document-description language. Both PDF and Postscript were developed by the Adobe Corporation.

PHP -- (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor)
PHP is a programming language used almost exclusively for creating software that is part of a web site. The PHP language is designed to be intermingled with the HTML that is used to create web pages. Unlike HTML, the PHP code is read and processed by the web server software (HTML is read and processed by the web browser software.) It is often used to make it possible for the web site owner to update his/her own web site.

Portal
A Web site that is or is intended to be the first place people see when using the Web. Typically a "Portal site" has a catalog of web sites, a search engine, or both. A Portal site may also offer email and other services It is a main "point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web. Nantucket.net is a portal site.

Search Engine
A system for searching the information available on the Web. Some search engines work by automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database of the results. Other search engines contains only material manually approved for inclusion in a database, and some combine the two approaches. Google and Yahoo are examples of Search Engines.

Spam (or Spamming)
An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn't ask for it. The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the word spam repeated over and over.

Upload
Transferring data (usually a file) from a the computer you are using to another computer or to your web site. The opposite of download.

URL -- (Uniform Resource Locator)
An address for resource available on the Internet. The most well known is http, but there are many others.

Virus
A chunk of computer programming code that makes copies of itself without any concious human intervention. Some viruses do more than simply replicate themselves, they might display messages, install other software or files, delete software of files, etc. Viruses are most often propogatted through email.

Web
Short for "World Wide Web."

Web page
A document designed for viewing in a web browser. Typically written in HTML. A web site is made of one or more web pages.

Website
The entire collection of web pages and other information (such as images, sound, and video files, etc.) that are made available through what appears to users as a single web server. Typically all the of pages in a web site share the same basic URL, for example the following URLs are all for pages within the same web site:
http://www.nantucket.net/
http://www.nantucket.net/inns
http://www.nantucket.net/guestbook

The term has a somewhat informal nature since a large organization might have separate "web sites" for each division, but someone might talk informally about the organizations' "web site" when speaking of all of them.

WWW -- (World Wide Web)
World Wide Web (or simply Web for short) is a term frequently used (incorrectly) when referring to "The Internet", WWW has two major meanings:

First, loosely used: the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP,telnet, USENET, WAIS and some other tools.

Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers), more commonly called "web servers", which are the servers that serve web pages to web browsers.