Glossary

A

Apache is the name of the web server software we run on our machines. More information about Apache web servers can be found at www.apache.org.

B

Bandwidth is the amount of data (in MB) that transfers from your web page, when someone looks at it. Commercial web space accounts have bandwidth restrictions, for example a Showroom 10 is limited to 50MB of data per day.

C

CGI or Common Gateway Interface is the mechanism used on the web servers for running scripts written in perl. There is a whole section called Using cgi-bins in the Developing Your Site Further section.

D

DNS - Domain Name Service is like a global directory of domain information. When you purchase a web forwarding service (e.g. www.yourdomain.co.uk) this is advertised in DNS so that everyone can reach your site.

F

FQDN - Fully Qualified Domain Name. This the domain part of your URL. For example www.demon.net or www.yourdomain.co.uk.

FTP - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the means by which you upload your web pages to the web server. You should upload your pages to the uk-upload.demon.co.uk machine, placing them in the docs directory. You can find more information about this in the Quick start section under Getting started.

L

Login name - this is needed when connecting the web servers to upload your web pages, or if you telnet to the web servers. Typically, your login name will be between 4 and 8 characters in length and made up of lower case letters and numbers, but must start with a letter.

P

Passwords - as well as a login name you will need a password to access your web account via FTP or telnet. Demon recommends that to make your password as secure as possible, it should be 8 characters long and made up of a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation characters (such as !$%&*).

Perl is a scripting language used for cgi's., With perl you can write programs which will process data from your HTML forms. Demon support the use of Perl 4 or Perl5.004 scripts. More information can be found in the Developing Your Site Further section, under Using cgi-bins.

R

Real Audio - this is an efficient means of providing audio files to visitors of your site. To be able to use real audio you need streams. Two free streams are available - click here for more details. You may also want to take a look at Real Network's pages too.

T

Telnet - As well as FTP access for uploading your pages, you have telnet access. This provides a limited UNIX shell where you can move files around and copy files. More information is provided in the Developing your site further section, under Using UNIX.

U

UNIX shell - Every web account has a limited shell account for moving files and copy files etc. To use the shell you will need to use UNIX commands, details of which can be found in the Developing your site further section, under Using UNIX.

URL or Uniform Resource Locator is the address you enter into a web browser for a web site. For example http://www.demon.net or http://www.yourdomain.co.uk. Your URL contains your Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQDN.