SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A protocol for sending email.

PHP Hosting - Best PHP Web Hosting (2009)

PHP hosting lets your Website take advantage of all the features of the open-source PHP scripting language. PHP scripts are embedded in HTML and are executed by the host's servers to generate dynamic content on your site. Because of its popularity, PHP is supported by many different operating systems and platforms, with a common setup being the LAMP (for Linux operating system, Apache server software, MySQL database and PHP) structure.

The most recent versions of PHP are PHP 4 and PHP 5. PHP script behavior can also be customized using a php.ini configuration file; if you’re looking for that option, be sure your PHP host supports custom php.ini files.

PHP helps drive the MySQL database, which explains why so many dynamic and data-rich sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Yahoo! take advantage of PHP scripts.

Other popular PHP-based applications include the phpBB message forum, the WordPress Weblogging script, the GBook guestbook, X7 Chat, the osCommerce and CubeCart shopping carts, phpForms for form creation, PHPlist mailing list management system, WebCalendar, and the PHP-Nuke and Mambo content management systems.

PHP Hosting is not an option for Website owners who want to use Active Server Pages or Visual Basic, both of which require a server running Windows. However, it an effective option if you're planning to use CGI, Perl, PHP or other open-source and Unix-based applications.

In addition to meeting your scripting needs, make sure your PHP host can also offer any other features you might want, including adequate disk space and bandwidth, email accounts, databases, a Web-based control panel, WebMail, FTP access, ecommerce and support for applications like Weblogs, discussion forums, live chat, photo galleries and more

Ecommerce Hosting - Best Ecommerce Web Hosting (2009)

Ecommerce hosting provides you with the features you need to run a fully functional and secure online store. The right ecommerce host can help you protect sensitive customer data, effectively manage product searches and orders, and deliver an online shopping experience that will keep your customers coming back again and again.

An ecommerce host will be able to provide you with all the basics needed for any Website: ample disk space and bandwidth, email accounts, email forwarding and autoresponders, databases and support for mailing lists, discussion forums, Weblogging, content management and other applications. In addition, though, an ecommerce host offers features specifically for conducting secure and customer-friendly transactions online.

Those features typically include one or several shopping cart applications, SSL (Secure Socket Layer), digital certificates and support for online security and PayPal integration. An ecommerce hosting plan might also include a number of scripts to help you deliver customer-friendly service via live chat, customer polling, guestbooks, email marketing and customer feedback.

To help you actually conduct financial transactions online, you'll also need a merchant account. This will allow you to process credit-card payments either on the Web or by phone. Depending on the type of shopping carts your host provides, your merchant account provider might be able to automatically process customer payments as they are made in real time. However, some shopping carts will require you to manually process each order as it comes in ... not a viable option for a very large or busy ecommerce site.

While you can in theory install and operate freeware or shareware scripts to conduct business online, a true ecommerce hostingshared or dedicated plan is usually a better bet for both you and your customers. A good ecommerce host can help you set up your online store quickly and start taking orders securely right away without all the headaches of do-it-yourself script installing, maintenance and order management.

Domain Name

Domain Name is an easy-to-remember address that can be translated by DNS into server's IP address. Domain names are hierarchical. Domain's suffix indicates which TLD (top level domain) it belongs to, for example .com, .gov, .org, .net, or .jp. Recently ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) added several new TLDs, like .biz, .pro., and .museum.

Disk Space (Storage Space)

The storage capacity for images, HTML files, audio files, video files, graphics, etc. A Web site planning to have a large amount of pages and/or planning to use a lot of images (or other large files) will need a greater amount of disk space.

Dedicated Servers (Dedicated Hosting)

The opposite of Shared Web hosting. Servers that are owned by a Web hosting company but rented out and used by a single customer. Web sites in need of a lot of disk space and/or data transfer and/or Web sites that have very specific software needs may opt to rent a dedicated server. Shared Web hosting is usually sufficient for most small and medium sized businesses.

Data Transfer (Bandwidth)

The amount of data that you are allowed to transfer (usually monthly). Data = images, text, audio files, video files and everything else that a server transfers to a user's web browser. Approximately 40,000 page views = 1 GB of data transfer. Web sites that get a lot of visitors (and page views) need larger amounts of data transfer (or bandwidth). Also, graphics-heavy sites will need more data transfer than more basic sites.