Web Hosting Basics for IIS Hosting Accounts
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 website hosting package, and what they mean to you and your site:
- Hard Disk Storage
- Monthly Transfer (bandwidth)
- POP3 Email Accounts
- Unlimited updates via FTP
- FrontPage Extensions
- CGI script support
- Active Server Pages
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. HostMySite plans offer 50 to 400+ megs of storage.
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 website 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 24/7 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 http://www.ipswitch.com/. If you are new to uploading a website, we provide 24/7/365 toll-free technical support, and an online support center to assist you.
Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions
Microsoft FrontPage is an extremely popular web development tool. You can create your site and upload it to our servers using this extremely powerful product. Our servers support FrontPage components which are easy-to-add features for your website like counters, order forms, and more. HostMySite.com always supports the latest version of FrontPage and is backwards compatible with all previous versions. You can use FrontPage to add powerful functionality to your website with an easy graphical interface.
CGI script support with Perl
CGI (common gateway interface) allows you to run scripts and programs on our server to enhance your web pages. Most of these scripts are written in a language called Perl. Unlike with HTML, CGI's are executed on the server. You can use CGI to add advanced forms, shopping carts, counters, and many other features to your website.
Active Server Pages
With ASP, you can add interactive content to your Web pages or build entire Web applications that use HTML pages as the interface to your visitors. Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic Web pages or build powerful Web applications. ASP pages are files that contain HTML tags, text, and script commands. ASP pages can call ActiveX components to perform tasks, such as connecting to a database or performing a business calculation.
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