Phastnet

Reliable Business Web Hosting Services

Web Site Hosting :: Glossary & Information

FAST AND RELIABLE WEB SITE HOSTING AND DEVELOPMENT
Reliable Business Web Hosting Services

Web Hosting Info & Glossary

Traffic Allowance

Traffic Allowance is the amount of data, measured in megabytes (MB), that can be transferred to or from your domain in a given month. This includes traffic from your web site, e-mail, FTP, and any other services that you are subscribed to. Exceeding your limit in a given month will not cause your site to stop working, but you will need to upgrade to a larger plan or purchase additional Traffic Allowance if this happens. You can check your current usage at any time through the Site Administrator Control Panel.

Disk Space

Disk Space is the amount of storage area on our servers that is allocated to your domain name, measured in megabytes (MB). Disk space usage is calculated in real-time by adding the size of all files in your storage area, which includes website files, scripts, e-mail being stored on the server, and also website log files (automatically rotated). You and your users can check disk space usage at any time through the Web-based Control Panels. Note that exceeding your disk space limit may cause certain services to function incorrectly, such as FTP and e-mail, due to not having sufficient room to store the information.

Hosting Type

There are two types of web hosting accounts: Name-based and IP-based. The most common is name-based web hosting, which means the server is using the name of your domain name to determine which information to serve. IP-based web hosting uses the IP address of your domain name, which requires a Dedicated IP Address. IP-based web hosting is only required for personalized SSL certificates and anonymous FTP access.

E-mail/FTP Accounts

This is the number of E-mail and FTP accounts that you can have on your domain. Each account can be created as e-mail only, FTP only, or both. You can also assign each user a unique disk quota, which helps manage your resources and prevents a single user from using all of your available resources. E-mail accounts will be able to access their e-mail through any POP3 and IMAP e-mail programs, such as Microsoft® Outlook, plus they will also have access to web-based e-mail software that can be accessed through a web browser. FTP accounts can be restricted to certain directories or granted access to your entire site.

Subdomains

The Subdomain feature allows you to create third level domain names from your main domain name. These subdomains can host completely different content from the main domain, since the content is stored in a different folder.

Example: something.yourdomain.com

User Services Available

Each user that you create on your domain can have access to various services, depending on what site features are available and also depending on what features you chose to give them access to. For example, if you want a user to have FTP access to their files (not yours), then you would select the "FTP" option when creating or modifying their user account.

Web-based Control Panels

All of our webhosting plans include web-based control panels for managing your website. This includes a main control panel called the Site Administrator Control Panel, plus a second-level control panel called the User Administrator Control Panel for each of your users/e-mail accounts. These control panels will allow you and your users to fully manage and configure your website, e-mail accounts, spam filtering, and much much more. The web-based control panels are easy to use and include full online documentation. Our technical support department is also available 24 hours per day if you need further assistance.

Secure Server (SSL) Pages

Secure Server Pages are for communicating sensitive information with your visitors through a secure connection, which is fully encrypted using industry standard 128-bit encryption. All of our webhosting accounts include access to our shared SSL certificates, which can be used to serve your web pages securely without purchasing your own SSL certificate. Personalized SSL certificates are also available.

Analog Web/FTP Log Analyzer

The Analog Web/FTP Log Analyzer gives basic website usage statistics about your website. These statistics are available in the Site Administrator Control Panel. For more information about Analog, please visit the Analog home page.

Webalizer Website Usage Statistics

Detailed website usage statistics with configurable output reporting. These reports are available in the Site Administrator Control Panel. For more information about Webalizer, please visit the Webalizer home page.

Access Logs with Referrers

Your website's Access Logs give you valuable information about every single hit to your web site. We have Referrers enabled also, which will give you additional information about where your traffic is coming from. The raw access logs are available for viewing in the Site Administrator Control Panel, and are also available for download through the File Manager or via FTP. These logs are in standard Apache web server format and can be imported into various offline log analysis software for greater detail about your website traffic.

Error Logs

Each time someone receives an error on your website due to missing pages, script errors, etc, the error information is recorded in your website's Error Logs. These logs are available for viewing in the Site Administrator Control Panel, and are also available for download through the File Manager or via FTP. These logs are in standard Apache web server format and can be imported into various offline log analysis software for greater detail about your website traffic.

SSH Access

SSH (Secure Shell) is a command-line tool used for communicating securely with our server. All information transmitted through SSH (including passwords) is encrypted using industry standard encryption methods.

POP3/IMAP/SMTP E-mail Servers

For maximum flexibility in accessing your e-mail, we run POP3, IMAP, and SMTP e-mail servers for all webhosting accounts. Your e-mail program of choice will use one or more of these servers to send and receive e-mail through the Internet. Web-based e-mail access is also available.

Web-based E-mail Access

Web-based e-mail access is for accessing your e-mail through a web browser. This software is included with most webhosting accounts or can be added to any account for free. Note that approximately 10MB of disk space is required for the webmail software installation. For more information, please visit the SquirrelMail home page.

"Catch All" E-mail Alias

The "Catch All" E-mail Alias forwards all unknown e-mail to your main e-mail account instead of bouncing back to the sender. This feature is enabled by default on all webhosting accounts but can be modified or removed through the Site Administrator Control Panel.

Unlimited E-mail Aliases

All webhosting accounts include Unlimited E-mail Aliases, which can be used for receiving e-mail for multiple e-mail addresses at one e-mail address. For example, if your e-mail address is johnsmith@yourdomain.com and you create an e-mail alias for john@yourdomain.com, you would be able to receive e-mail at both e-mail addresses without checking 2 separate e-mail accounts.

Unlimited E-mail Forwarding

All webhosting accounts include Unlimited E-mail Forwarding, which is used for automatically forwarding e-mail to a different e-mail address.

Unlimited Autoresponders

Autoresponders are used for automatically replying to e-mails with a predetermined response. Predetermined responses are customizable and could include out-of-office notifications, sales information, contact info, and much more.

Unlimited Vacation Messages

Vacation Messages are very similar to Autoresponders, but are primarily used for sending a temporary "I'm away on vacation" type of automatic response to incoming e-mails.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists can be used to send messages frequently to a large amount of people for things such as newsletters, product updates, and more. Our control panel allows you to update and configure your mailing lists to easily send out information to large groups of people.

Spam Reject List

The Spam Reject List is available in the Site Administrator Control Panel and is used for adding e-mail addresses, domain names, or IP addresses to a list that is automatically rejected as spam before it reaches your mailbox on the server. This can help in reducing unwanted e-mails that come from known locations.

Basic Spam Filtering - RBL-based Blacklists

All web hosting accounts are protected by this first layer of defense against spam, the RBL-based blacklists. As soon as a message comes into our mail servers, the IP address of the sender is compared against lists of known spammers, spam facilities, and dynamic IP addresses. If the IP address matches, then the e-mail is rejected at the door and you will never see it in your mailbox. This method has been successful at stopping 80% - 90% of spam with no legitimate e-mail being rejected in the process. Here are the current RBL lists that we compare against:

Advanced Spam Filtering

For maximum control of filtering unwanted spam e-mails, the Advanced Spam Filtering feature is available. This feature uses a scoring system for determining if an e-mail is spam or not, and each e-mail account on your domain name can use the User Administrator Control Panel to configure their individual spam filtering preferences. E-mails determined to be spam can be automatically deleted, moved to a spam folder, or tagged as spam and delivered to the main inbox. The system also has an "auto-learn" capability that further increases the accuracy of spam filtering over time.

E-mail Virus Scanning

This feature enables automatic server-side virus scanning of all e-mails that go in and out of your domain. Any harmful e-mails will be disarmed and/or quarantined, with a notification sent to you about the event. Certain popular viruses will be deleted without notification, since they are common and can cause floods of e-mail notifications for no reason. We still recommend that you run a virus scanner on your end too, but a minimum of 99% of all e-mail viruses will be stopped at the server and will never reach you, which will reduce the amount of unwanted e-mail you receive and increases security at the same time.

Parked Domains

This feature will let you assign a separate domain name to work exactly the same as the primary domain name. All services will be available to the parked domain name, including e-mail, web, FTP, SSH, and MySQL. Note that the parked domain name is a pointer to the primary domain name and shares the same resources. E-mail can be sent to either domain name and will end up in the same physical mailbox on the server, which means you will not need to create extra accounts in your e-mail program to handle the extra domain names.

Password Protected Directories

If you need to store private content on your website, Password Protected Directories will allow you to specify usernames and passwords for accessing a directory and it's contents. Anyone that tries to access the directory will need to supply a valid username and password before downloading any files from that directory. This feature is fully configurable through the Site Administrator Control Panel.

Real Audio/Video Support

This is for hosting multimedia files created in the Real Audio/Video file formats, such as .ra, .ram, .rm, etc. For more information, please visit the Real.com home page.

Microsoft FrontPage Support

If you are using Microsoft's FrontPage software to create and publish your website, then you will need the FrontPage Server Extensions enabled on your website. These are available at no extra charge, but you will need to either select this option during signup, or send a request to our support department to have it added to your website.

PHP Scripting Language with Zend Optimizer

PHP is currently the most popular scripting language on the Internet for creating dynamic websites. All of our webhosting accounts support these types of pages, which enables you to create webpages that do much more than static HTML pages. For more information, please visit the PHP.net home page.

MySQL Database Hosting

The MySQL database server is the world's most popular open source database. Millions of websites use it to store data and create dynamic web sites. This feature will give you access to our MySQL database server and includes one database. Extra databases are included with some plans or can be added to any plan for an extra fee.

Extra MySQL Databases

If you have more than one or two applications that use MySQL, it may be more convenient to separate the data into separate databases. This is not required, since each database supports unlimited tables, but some pre-made applications may not support custom table names or you may find some other need for a separate database. Extra databases can be created or deleted through the Site Administrator Control Panel if your account includes them or if you have purchased extra databases.

Server-Side Includes (SSI)

Server-Side Includes can be used for including a separate file's contents in your main file. The most popular use of this is to create a header and footer file, which are included automatically on your main HTML pages. This makes it easier to update your header and footer without needing to update your entire website.

CGI Access (cgi-bin)

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) allows you to run scripts written in many different languages on your web site. This opens up endless possibilities for creating dynamic web pages and database applications. This feature is also known as the "cgi-bin".

Modperl for Apache

mod_perl brings together the full power of the Perl programming language and the Apache HTTP server. You can use Perl to manage Apache, respond to requests for web pages and much more. mod_perl gives you a persistent Perl interpreter embedded in your web server. This lets you avoid the overhead of starting an external interpreter and avoids the penalty of Perl start-up time, giving you super-fast dynamic content. For more information, please visit the mod_perl home page.

Anonymous FTP Access

This feature will allow you to place files in a public folder that can be downloaded by connecting to your FTP server without a unique username/password. Anonymous users can also upload files to your incoming folder, but they can only download from your public folder, which prevents file trading abuse. Note that a Dedicated IP Address is required for this feature.

SSL Certificate

A personalized SSL Certificate will increase customer trust when transmitting sensitive data to your website. Instead of using our shared SSL certificate, you can have a unique SSL certificate issued with your company details and can also use a shorter URL, such as https://www.yourdomain.com. Phastnet offers a full line of Thawte and GeoTrust SSL certificates. Note that a Dedicated IP Address is required for this feature.

Dedicated IP Address

A Dedicated IP Address is a unique IP address that is assigned to your domain name. This feature is only required for SSL Certificates and Anonymous FTP.

Web-based File Manager

The Web-based File Manager is a feature inside the Site Administrator Control Panel that allows you to manage your website files through a web browser. This can be helpful when other methods of file transfer, such as FTP, are not available.

Perl 5 Support

Perl is a very powerful scripting language that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. For more information, please visit the Perl.com home page.

HTMLScript

HTMLScript, also known as MivaScript, is a scripting language used for creating dynamic webpages. The most popular use for this language is with the Miva Merchant shopping cart system.

Online Billing and Account Manager

The Online Billing and Account Manager allows you to instantly view/update your account information, view/pay invoices, upgrade packages, add features, and much more!

Internic Registration

If you are registering a new domain name, the Internic requires that your domain name is registered in a public registry system. We include this service with all domain names that are registered through Phastnet.

Free Domain Name Transfer

Transfer your domain name registration to Phastnet for free! There are no transfer fees when transferring your domain name, the only requirement is that you renew your domain name for at least 1 year. You will not lose any of your current registration time, the renewal year(s) will be added to your current expiration date.

Daily Site Backups

Your website will automatically be backed up every day to one of our backup servers, which will ensure that your data remains safe and available for quick restore if needed.

User Controlled Backup/Restore

The User Controlled Backup/Restore features are available in the Site Administrator Control Panel. This will allow you to manually backup and restore your site files, or you can schedule daily, weekly, or monthly backups to a remote FTP server of your choice.

24x7x365 Technical Support

Live representatives are available to assist you 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.

99.9% Uptime Guarantee

We guarantee that your web site and all related services will be up and available at least 99.9% of the time!

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

If you are not completely satisfied with our service, just let us know within 30 days of signing up and we will issue a full refund.

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