cPanel

This is the most commonly used by web hostings control panel in the moment.
This control panel could do absolutely everything a normal control panel does, a moreover it could do many extra things. cPanel makes it easier and foster for the consumer to control their site, because of giving instantaneous info to the server and the status of the account.
WebHost Manager (WHM) supports cPanel, and it is the automatic end of the system. This WebHost Manager gives the right to the hosting to make domains, control nameservers and so on.

File Transfer Protocol(FTP)

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method with the help of which we could upload files. Most of the web hostings offer the oportunity to upload files with an FTP client, but there are other hostings where the uploading is made with control panel. With an FTP client a connection is made and established and then you can upload whatever files you want, as long as you are not surpassing the limited diskspace.

Money back guarantee

Usually most of the web hostings offer a money back guarantee when you sign up, because of this being a merciless bussiness. In case that you are not satisfied with the survice they offer, you can get your money back. It is suggestable to check out this money back guarantee and if there is such the policy about the refund before you choose your web hosting.

Backups

Backups being important for your desktop, they are determinant for your site. As you known on your PC the hard disk is inactive sometimes, while on the server are in use non stop. The hard disks are not perfect, mistakes and errors happen. That is when a hacker can have an access to your files, and this is the reason it is suggested to have a backup on the files on your site.
Most of the hostings provide automatic backup - a backup per week or month made on another hard disk. But most secure is to backup all the information on the site on a different server, or even on off-site in an unknown location. That is how your data is protected from all kind of damages.
It is suggested even that you make a backup of your info once a month. Having a shell access, you just download the whole HTML directory. In case you do not have, you can use a File Transfer Protocol program and backup the files. And always backup the Structured Query Language (SQL) data.

Miva Merchant/Empressa

You may think that selling things online is easy, but in fact it is not. What are the tasks of an online store:
      save info about the users;
      save info of the product;
      update the stock;
      backup and so on.
Miva Merchant is a software, which preserves your website - its design, products, all the information about the products and users, the orders, payment, and much more. But the number of hostings providing this type of software.

NameServers

Nameservers or (DNS - domain namesierves) help to find the exact logation of the website on the internet.
For instance, somebody want to visit the site www.cheap-hosting-domain.info and he/she send a quest to the Internet Service Procider (ISP). And the provider does not known where is the location of this site. Then ISP looks at WHOIS lookup, and there he finds the nameserves. They then give information about the Internet Protocol (IP) of the domain. And after that you have access to the website you asked.

Diskspace

This is the amount of information you can store on the server. Every letter and number and so on is one byte. But the images are usually more than a byte, they can extend to 100.000 bytes or 100 kilobytes. And in addition, in diskspace are stored emails and data too.

Reseller Web Hosting

This is next after virtual or shared web hosting, this is usually used by those who sell hosting to others, but do not have the opportunity or do not want to incvest in support of such a huge system.
In this hosting you control more than one domain. The bandwidth and diskspace of your account is portioned among the sites this hosting manages.
Most of the people first start with this hosting, and the go to dedicated servers, but other prefer only reseller hosting because of its capability.

CGI-BIN

Common Gateway Interface (CGI), in the past it was used for intersection between the executed things on the server and the users. Modules were not in-built, so this had to be executed somehow. And it was completed in the CGI_BIN directory.
Some think that some perl files are CGI, becaouse some are ending with .cgi. With the CGI_BIN interface you can run all type of programs, written in all kind of languages.
Nowadays, the modules for the most popularly and most commonly used languages like perl and PHP are directly attached to the server, and it is easier this way than it was with CGI-BIN.

Virtual Web Hosting

This type of hosting makes a virtual site otn the server, and usually as we known this kind of servers host a lot of sites at the same time.
This type of hostings allows a shared resource to be consumed by many sites.
The term virtual or shared hosting initiates from Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP. In the first version, it was neccesary for ervery site to have its own Internet Protocol address. But the the next version, allowed approaching of sites, which did not have their own unique IP address. And that is what is in fact a virtual or shared hosting - one Internet Protocol address with multiple websites on it.

Java Servlets (JSP)

Java Server Pages are pages written on both HTML and Java.
Despite the simmilar names, Java Server Pages (JSP) and Active Server Pages (ASP), they differ alot. On the one hand, the JSP is product of Sun, and it can be executed with the help of Java. On the other hand, ASP is A Microsoft product, and is based on VBScript.

Email/Webmail

This is the most popular reason for using Internet. It is common choice to have your own domain and web hosting. Most of the web hosings have no limit of the amount of emails, as long as you have disk space. Usually POP3 and IMAP are supported, but for better contact the web hosting company to be sure.
Webmail is also supported by many web hostings. This gives you access to to your email from any point in the world.

Databases

This is the proccess of organizing your information. You can think of it as a tables full of information, and anybody can extract info from it. The structured query language or SQL is a special language for databeses.
Almost all hostings provide MySQL, which is usually used in union with PHP. Windows uses other databases such as PostgreSQL and Ms SQL. Databases are convenient for everybody because of its easily understandable and usable structure. Almost all websites and online applications are using databases to save their data.

Billing/Subscription

There are different methods of payment in the different hostings.
Such methods are with credit card or trough PayPal. With credit card it is a direct account or payment, and every billing cycle you are charged a fee. With PayPal it is almost the same.
To obtaint your bussiness, most of the hostings give discuonts for extended billing. For instance, you can be given a 30% discount if you pay for a year. Yes, this may sve you money, but be sure that the web hosting company is succeeding, there are a lot of companies which live for not long.

FronPage

This is Microsoft program which simplifies the proccess of developing webpages. Op[erated by WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage helps you make the pages exactly the way you want them to appear.
A problem of WYSIWYG editors is the quality of generating HTML by FrontPage. This program is just to learn the people how to manage a website, if you are more seriously working this kind of job it will be better to use FrontPage with more complex tools or even a profesional version.

Operating Systems

In home the most common operating system is Windows, but not for servers.
The choice of operating system is depending on your needs:
Windows web hosting is for Microsoft products such as .NET, MS SQL, Ms Access, and so on.
On the other hand, Linux, which free and this does not affect of the quality of the histing, and Windost is a bit expensive web hosting. More commonly seen amongweb hostings is Linux, and this provides easier help and support.
So it really comes down to the needs. for Microsoft products the onle solutions is Windows web hosting, but in other cases Linux web hosting is a better choice.

IP address

This is a string of numbers xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, and the range of xxx is from 0 to 255. This is used to symbolize a computer in the Internet.
Talking about web hosting, the IP tells the hosting of the site.
As mentioned before, it is possible to have more than one site on one IP address. And finaly, a dedicate IP means only one domain on the IP address.

Visitor Statistics

Every webmaster, must have statistics about the visitors. And this is in order to know the size of popularity of the site, the most popular part of the site, info about the people, and what they are looking for.
Impressions are called the number of pages the users view.
Unique, is the number of the people that have visited the site.
Watching the visitors statistics often andhelps you know how to make your site the way the visitors will like it.

Programing Languages

With the initial development of websites are common languages like Perl and Python, while PHP and ASP.NET are bocomming the actual programming languages.
When the user receives the HTML, the server is not working with any info till the users decides to open another webpage. This means the page is static.
To have a dynamic elements on the page (for instance making a page accomodated to what the user wants), you should use programming languages like PHP and ASP.NET.
To assist the function of such languages, there are a lot of scripts and software which are available on the web. Only ASP.NET needs a Windows web hosting, the other programing languages will workjust about any operating system.

Video/Audio

It is not an easy job to download a video or and audio in order to view it. Streaming video/audio is a method which let you to transfer data to the user in order he to be able to watch or listen something before he had downloaded it.
HTTP streaming is ordinary - it is used in union with Java (it sends info to the user, and this data is immediately decoded). But streaming formats like QuickTime and Realvideo have to be provided with support from the web hosting.
This is not offered from most hostings, because of the costs, such as licensing fees, increasing bandwidth consumption, and so on). Check if your web hosting procides it.

Subdomain

The subdomain is considered to be one level below the domain.
It si used to build the brand, and also for separating the content.
For instance, domain is www.yahoo.com, and subdomains are movies.yahoo.com, mail.yahoo.com and so on and they are used the denominate yahoo.com.
Nowadays, the control panels back up subdomains, and this allows the limitation of the number of subdomains that are accessible for the user.

Hard Disk

This is the place where the data is kept - the operating system, HTML elements - images, sounds, videos and so on.
Usually the hard disk is ovelooked. A lot of people beware for the restrictions of the CPU, and do not care about the size of the hard disk. This wrong interpretation of the hard disk.
The same as RAM, the hard disks differ by size, the speed in access to data and so on. But thwe difference betwen RAM and hard disk is that the additional hard disk is not expensive. The importance is in the speed of response of the hard disk.
The important characteristic of the hard disk are: the the size, seek time and the speed of oparating. And if we are talking about a server he importance of the last two grows.
Now a little bit about IDE/SATA against SCSI. Most PC have hard disks IDE or SATA. The IDE and SATA hard disks works with the rest of the computer, while the SCSI (pronounced as "scuzzy') is better. For server the better solution is the SCSI hard disk.
Now it is the time to explain the seek time and the speed of operating usually seen in computers as RPM. The approximate search time of most PC is 8 ms. The SCSI the time is just 50%.
And about the speed of operating or RPM (revolution per minute), the IDE/SATA have ordinarily 7200 up to 10.000 RPM. While the SCSI drives between 10.000 and 15.000 RPM. Now assuming the last two paragraph we can see that the SCSI hard disk both find and provides the data faster.
And not a very common is the forth factor - the speed of the transfer of the data between the hard disk and CPU. And as follows that speed of IDE/sATA is 100 Mbps, and that of SCSI - 320 Mbps.
Other advantages of SCSI are - mean time betwen failures (the calculation of the duration of proper work of the hard disk), more spohisticate management of data, less server resources and so on. Last but not least the change of SCSI is much more easier than that of the IDE/SATA.
And as a conclusion, I can say that for a server definitely the SCSI is a beter choice.

CPU(Central Processing Unit)

Talking about servers, the CPU is a very important character.
The chipmakers Intel and AMD make CPU which fulfill better with server operations. They do look like the desktop ones.
The Intel proposal is a Xeon CPU, which works both with multi and single processor. And on the other hand we all have heard Pentium 4, it works good with both single and dual systems.
The AMD proposal is Opteron, and for a PC their choice is Athlon64. The Opteron works with multiprocessors and have access to huge ammount of RAM.
When comes down to what is better it is definitely suggestable to choose server CPUs.

Bottlenecks

Bandwidth

This is the limit of the data allowed to be send and received for a month for instance.
Ech element your site receives or sends (for instance a demand for a page), is equal to one byte. Alomost all pages' size is betwen 10.000 - 15.000 bytes. The size of images is up to 150 kilobytes (1 kilobyte = 1000 byte), and the downloads reach up to 10 megabytes (1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes = 1.000.000 bytes). And because of this info it is obious why most of the limit of bandwidth of websites is in gigabytes (= 1000 megabytes).
If you surpass your limit you will be charged ffor the extra bandwidth.
The different Internet providers give different Internet. This results in the rates of download, and time. If your web hosting is cheap do not expect big bandwidth and good performance.
And be informed that the Internet connection breaks. That is way it is better if you have server and hosting to have multiple Internet providers. If one of the connections does not work, ues amnother.