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, our foundation hosting plan will deliver
outstanding features at an affordable price.
Here are the key components of a hosting package, and
what they mean to you and your site:
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. Alliance Web Site Solutions plans offer 100 to
500+ 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 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 24x7 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 ipswitch.com.
If you are new to uploading a web site, we provide 24x7x365 technical support 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. Alliance Web Site Solutions 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.
Custom Control Panel
Our Customer Control Center is the best web hosting
control panel available. We're always here to help, but we understand that our
customers want the ability to perform routine tasks without calling or
emailing our support center. Unlimited FTP users, custom errors, domain
management, permission control, and unlimited ODBC connections are just a few
of the many configurable features.
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