Weekly Tips - Week of July 21, 2008
Here are some definitions that may help you when starting your own online business. You can find more definitions by going to http://www.techterms.com/internet.php . You can browse definitions by clicking a category to the left :)
Bandwidth
Bandwidth refers to how much data you can send through a network or modem connection. It is usually measured in bits per second, or "bps." You can think of bandwidth as a highway with cars travelling on it. The highway is the network connection and the cars are the data. The wider the highway, the more cars can travel on it at one time. Therefore more cars can get to their destinations faster. The same principle applies to computer data -- the more bandwidth, the more information that can be transferred within a given amount of time.
Database
This is a data structure used to store organized information. A database is typically made up of many linked tables of rows and columns. For example, a company might use a database to store information about their products, their employees, and financial information. Databases are now also used in nearly all e-commerce sites to store product inventory and customer information. Database software, such as Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, and MySQL is designed to help companies and individuals organize large amounts of information in a way where the data can be easily searched, sorted, and updated.
While the first databases were relatively "flat" (limited to simple rows and columns), today's relational databases allow users to access, update, and search information based on the relationship of data in one database to another. Certain databases even let users store data such as sound clips, pictures, and videos.
DNS (Domain Name System)
Stands for "Domain Name System." The primary purpose of DNS is to keep Web surfers sane. Without DNS, we would have to remember the IP address of every site we wanted to visit, instead of just the domain name. Can you imagine having to remember "17.254.3.183" instead of just "apple.com"? While I have some Computer Science friends who might prefer this, most people have an easier time remembering simple names.
The reason the Domain Name System is used is because Web sites are acutally located by their IP addresses. For example, when you type in "http://www.adobe.com," the computer doesn't immediately know that it should look for Adobe's Web site. Instead, it sends a request to the nearest DNS server, which finds the correct IP address for "adobe.com." Your computer then attempts to connect to the server with that IP number. DNS is just another one of the many features of the Internet that we take for granted.
Domain Name
This is the name that identifies an Web site. For example, "microsoft.com" is the domain name of Microsoft's Web site. A single Web server can serve Web sites for multiple domain names, but a single domain name can point to only one machine. For example, Apple Computer has Web sites at www.apple.com, www.info.apple.com, and store.apple.com. Each of these sites could be served on different machines.
Then there are domain names that have been registered, but are not connected to a Web server. The most common reason for this is to have e-mail addresses at a certain domain name without having to maintain a Web site. In these cases, the domain name must be connected to a machine that is running a mail server.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
Stands for "File Transfer Protocol." It is a common method of transferring files via the Internet from one computer to another. Some common FTP programs are "Fetch" for the Mac, and "WS_FTP" for Windows. However, you can also use a Web browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer to access FTP servers. To do this, you need to type the URL of the server into the location field of the browser.
Meta Search Engine
Meta search engines are search engines that search other search engines. Confused? To put it simply, a meta search engine submits your query to several other search engines and returns a summary of the results. Therefore, the search results you receive are an aggregate result of multiple searches.
While this strategy gives your search a broader scope than searching a single search engine, the results are not always better. This is because the meta search engine must use its own algorithm to choose the best results from multiple search engines. Often, the results returned by a meta search engine are not as relevant as those returned by a standard search engine.
Meta Tag
This is a special HTML tag that is used to store information about a Web page but is not displayed in a Web browser. For example, meta tags provide information such as what program was used to create the page, a description of the page, and keywords that are relevant to the page. Many search engines use the information stored in meta tags when they index Web pages.
Name Server
A name server translates domain names into IP addresses. This makes it possible for a user to access a website by typing in the domain name instead of the website's actual IP address. For example, when you type in "www.microsoft.com," the request gets sent to Microsoft's name server which returns the IP address of the Microsoft website.
Each domain name must have at least two name servers listed when the domain is registered. These name servers are commonly named ns1.servername.com and ns2.servername.com, where "servername" is the name of the server. The first server listed is the primary server, while the second is used as a backup server if the first server is not responding.
Name servers are a fundamental part of the Domain Name System (DNS). They allow websites to use domain names instead of IP addresses, which would be much harder to remember. In order to find out what a certain domain name's name servers are, you can use a WHOIS lookup tool.
Site Map
A site map, sometimes written "sitemap," is an overview of the pages within a website. Site maps of smaller sites may include every page of the website, while site maps of larger sites often only include pages for major categories and subcategories of the website. While site maps can be organized in a variety of ways, most use an outline form, with pages arranged by topic. This gives visitors a good overall picture of how the site is organized and clearly defines all the resources the website has to offer.
While a properly designed website should allow visitors to navigate the entire site without using the site map, incorporating a site map gives users another means of locating pages. For this reason, each page listed in a site map is typically linked to the page it represents. This allows visitors to quickly jump to any section of a website listed in the site map.
WHOIS
This is an Internet service that finds information about a domain name or IP address. If you enter a domain name in a WHOIS search engine, it will scour a huge database of domains and return information about the one you entered. This information typically contains the name, address, and phone number of the administrative, billing, and technical contacts of the domain name. WHOIS can also be used to simply check if a certain domain name is available or if it has already been registered. To see the WHOIS service in action, check out Allwhois.comor BetterWhois.com. 
