Archive for August, 2011

Design/Web Definitions

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language

PHP – A server side scripting language used to add advanced functionality to web pages.

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets – CSS is used to style your site. CSS makes sure that all of the elements on your page show up where and how you want them.

Browser – AKA web browser – Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome.

jpeg, png, tif, gif -These are formats used to save images.

Vector – Vector based images are create using mathematical calculations instead of pixels. The main reason to use vectors is that because they are based on calculations you can blow them up and big as you want to without losing any quality. For this reason, logos are usually create using vectors.

Address Bar -  The address bar is the long white bar located at the top of your browser that displays the URL or address of the web page you are viewing such as  http://www.amlingstudios.com/aboutus.html

Domain Name – The address people use to get to your site. Ex. www.your domain.com  To learn more about domains read our blog post What’s a domain name.

URL – This is another name for a companies web address, what we are looking for if ask for a URL is what you typed into the address bar to get to the page you want to show us.

CMS – Content Management System. CMS’s are online programs that let you update your website with limited knowledge of html and css.

Resolution – Dots per inch.

WordPress – Is a popular open source Content Management System that allows for a great deal of customization.

Open source – Is when developers share there code for a program they create so that other developers can build off of it and make modifications.

Pluggins – Work with a CMS to enhance its functionality.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Search Engine Optimization is when you build your site so that it can easily be accessed and cataloged by Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Myspace, these are all social media sites. Where the content is create by you and your “friends”

Web Hosting – Hosting is when a company stores the files that make up your website.

Email

Email, with more than a billion emails sent everyday, it needs little introduction. But have you ever thought about your email address and why it says @gmail or @aol or @hotmail? These are the domain names associated with each of these mail servers. But what about @AmlingStudios.com or more importantly  @yourwebsite. Having an email address that corresponds to your business name helps build credibility and reinforce your websites exposure.   John@ABCBuilding.com comes across as more professional than  John_ABCBuilding@gmail.com .

So how do you get an email address thats associated with your domain name? The first step is to talk with your domain name  or hosting provider. Often you are given a free email account with the purchase of a hosting package, with the ability to buy more if need be. If you prefer to go a more economical route, many hosting providers will supply you with several email aliases for no extra charge. These email aliases will still be somthing@yourwebsite.com but they have no storage space of there own and are meant to forward on to another email account, say your personal one. This has the benefit of having all your email in the same inbox, but has the disadvantage that if you reply to a message the recipient will see your personal e-mail address.

What is a server?

The term “server” gets thrown around a lot with a lot of explination. A server is just a computer. It can be a lap top, a desktop or a rack mount sitting in a temperature controlled room. But basically a server is a computer with special software installed on it. Servers “server” information to other computers, anything from files like mp3′s and Word documents to webpages. In this post I’m going to focus on web servers. There are two main types of web servers: Windows which runs a program called IIS and Linux which runs a variety or programs of which Appache is the most popular. Appache is so popular in fact that 90% of the worlds web pages come from Appache web servers.

How does a web server work? When you type www.amlingstudios.com into your web browser, it sends a request over your internet connection to the web server that is hosting that web site.  The web server looks for the HTML page that was requested. It then gathers that page along with all the images and assets associated with it and returns it to your web browser. Basically, you request the information and the web server “serves” it to you.

Types of Web Hosting

There are many hosting companies and each of them are striving to win your business; so, who do you go with? Like most things the answer isn’t black and white. It depends a lot on the type of website you want to host. Small informational sites need very little in the way of hosting. They consume small amounts of bandwith. On the other hand, large social networking sites need dedicated servers with huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth. So what type of site is yours? The easiest way to tell is to answer these questions:

  • How many pages is your site?
  • Are you going to have  a lot of interactivity or video content?
  • Are you planning to sell things?
  • Is your site for business or personal use?

Most hosting providers sell hosting in three groups; shared hosting, virtual servers, and dedicated servers.

Shared hosting is by far the most common as well as the cheapest option.
If you see a hosting plan for $10 a month or less, its going to be a shared hosting account. Shared hosting is when you own a small piece of space on a virtual server.  The rest of the virtual server is taken up by other peoples web sites that share the same computer resources as you. If another site  on you shared hosting account is a resource hog, you may find your site slowing to a crawl. However, we should note that a good hosting company monitors this to make sure all the websites are sharing the computer resources fairly. Shared hosting also comes with a slightly higher security risk. Since your site is sharing the virtual server with several other sites, your all connected. Meaning if one of them gets hacked, your site could be at risk. Luckily hosting companies have done  a lot to beef up their security to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Virtual Server – A virtual server is when a portion of a computers resources has been partitioned off and server software has been installed on that portion. There can be many virtual servers on one computer but they act as completely independent units and have no knowledge of or impact on each other. Wait a minute, wasn’t that shared hosting thing on a virtual server? Yes, but this time you’ve got all the space on the virtual server to yourself. Which means, that resource hogs and other sites security issues are not your problem. Virtual server packages also give you more control over the configurations of your server. So if you want to install a new apache module or server language, your free to do so. This is something you can’t do with shared hosting.

Dedicated hosting is very similar to virtual hosting, but instead of having a virtual space you have a physical one. A full computer/server is dedicated just for your site and is fully customizable. Just as if it were sitting on your desk. Dedicated servers are the most expensive and are mostly reserved for very large and processor intensive web sites.

So, if you answered that your site was personal or under 50 pages a shared hosting option is probably what your looking for.  If you’re planning a large e-commerce site or hosting a video library, than a virtual server would probably be a better fit. Dedicated servers are always a good option if you can afford them. But, if you’re looking to spend that kind of money and need those kinds of resources, you make be better off buying and running your own server.