Web Hosting from Irish Domains

What is Web Hosting ?
Web hosting is the provision of the computing facilities on which a web site is located. Irish Domains provide a range of web hosting services which suit most applications from a simple "we're here" web page, to complex interactive ecommerce sites. We offer space and bandwidth on our high-performance web servers to companies who want to create a web presence of their own.

Web Hosting Glossary
Disk Space	This is the maximum amount of space which you are allowed use for your website. This is usually specified in MB (millions of bytes). Additional usage above this amount is usually charged extra. For example, this entire web site takes about 2MB.
Data Transfer	This is the maximum amount of information which you are allowed to transfer (in any direction). Usually this is specified in MB (millions of bytes) or GB (billions of bytes) per month. As a very rough guide, a thousand typed A4 pages would take about 2MB.
POP3 Account	A POP3 account is the username and password account on a server which is used by an email program (such as Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora) to pick up your mail messages. Normally all email/web-hosting packages have at least one general POP3 account to pick up all the email for that domain. Additional POP3 accounts may then be configured to allow different people (or computers) to pick up email for different addresses. POP3 accounts may be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Web Mail	Normally email is received using an email client such as Microsoft Outlook Express or Eudora. Typically this resides just on one PC so it can be difficult to read your email when you are away. Web mail allows you to use a browser to access your email so that you can send and receive messages from anywhere in the world.
Email Alias	An email alias is an email address which is routed to a different location. For example, an alias sales could be set up as an alias which points to jbloggs. Then any email for sales@acme.com would be routed to jbloggs@acme.com. In addition, an alias could be configured to route email to a completely different location such as a free web email account or an email address for a different company.
Autoresponder	An autoresponder is a an email address which is configured to immediately reply with a predefined message to the sender. For example, an autoresponder at info@acme.com might reply automatically with a description of acme.com's goods and services. Autoresponders are also useful for replying on behalf of users which are on holiday.
Front Page Extensions	Front page extensions are additional features on a web server which are designed to facilitate websites designed with Microsoft Front Page. These extensions simplify the uploading and maintenance of the site, and also allow certain Front Page specific components (WebBots) to work correctly.
FTP Access	FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the usual method for uploading website pages to the server. To use FTP you require a special FTP client (program) on your PC. FTP clients such as ws_ftp are readily available on the internet, and are now built-in to most web design packages.
Secure Telnet	A Secure Telnet account allows you to log into the web server as a normal UNIX user. You will have access to a basic UNIX shell and be able to manipulate files within your own directory space. Typically this is used to setup and maintain CGI programs in your cgi-bin directory. Anything you do is protected by strong encryption to prevent the possibility of passwords etc. being intercepted.
CGI	CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a system whereby information can be exchanged between web pages and programs running on the server. A common use for CGI is to process information obtained via a form on a web page, or to allow exchanging of data with a SQL database on the server. Page counters are usually implemented using CGI.
Statistics	Statistics give you information about how many people are visiting your site and what pages they are accessing. They are an invaluable marketing tool if you want to attract more visits to your site.
Referral Logs	Referral logs are an addition to normal site statistics. They allow you to track not only who is accessing your pages, but what link they followed to get to your site. Referral information is invaluable for evaluating the success of search engines or other forms of web advertising.
Secure Server	A secure server allows the exchange of encrypted information between a web browser and the server. Typically it is used on ecommerce sites to capture order and credit-card information in a secure fashion, although it can be used to send any valuable information.
MySQL	MySQL is an advanced multi-threaded multi-user SQL database system. Your database is hosted on a dedicated high-performance MySQL server.
Shopping Cart	This is a special e-commerce program that keeps track of items your customers order on-line as they add and remove items from a virtual "shopping cart." When the customer is ready to check out, the program tallies the order for your customer to review. If the customer decides to submit the order, the program will email the order information to the email address of your choice and send a "receipt" to your customer.
Domain Alias	A domain alias allows an additional domain name to point to your website. If your main website is www.abc.com, you could set up a domain alias so that if anybody accesses www.xyz.com, they view the same content as your main site. Naturally, both abc.com and xyz.com must first have been registered by you.
Anonymous FTP	This is different to normal FTP access in that it allows anybody to upload and download files from a specific area in your account without having to remember a username and password.