Reference & Manual > Glossary > A

A Record
An A record is part of the zone file. It is used to point Internet traffic to an IP address. For example, you can use an "A record" to designate abc.yourdomain.com to send traffic to your web site at IP address 209.15.32.135. You can also designate xyz.yourdomain.com to go to a separate IP address.

Access to Log Files
Log files are stats that keep track of what pages and areas of your site that users are visiting. Using Web Stats and the Log Manager you can download, view, manage and delete your log files.

Active Channel
An Active Channel is a frequently updated information residing on a Web server. Users can subscribe to the channel if they have a CDF (Channel Definition Language) capable browser (e.g. Internet Explorer)

Active X
ActiveX is a set of technologies from Microsoft that enables interactive content for the World Wide Web. Before ActiveX, Web content was static, 2-dimensional text and graphics. With ActiveX, Web sites come alive using multimedia effects, interactive objects, and sophisticated applications that create a user experience comparable to that of high-quality CD-ROM titles. ActiveX provides the glue that ties together a wide assortment of technology building blocks to enable these "active" Web sites.

Ad Rotator
Ad Rotator is an ASP COMPONENT. When a visitor requests a page from your site, ad rotator determines the appropriate ads and randomly or sequentially if specified, selects an ad to show to your site's visitors. All this happens within approximately 0.05 seconds.

Ad Server
An ad server allows you to place rotating banner advertisements on your website, manage your advertising clients, and to collect statistics on banner views and click throughs.

Address
Unique identifier of a web page. URL (Uniformed Resource Locator) is more frequently used for this purpose.

ADN
(Advanced Digital Network). A 56kbps dedicated communication line.

ADO
Microsoft Data Access Component Used primarily as a scripting language interface to OLE DB or ODBC data access ActiveX or Active Data Objects.

ADSL
(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop). High speed Internet access using the telephone line. It uses line-adaptive modulation and provides data speeds from 384kbps to 1.5 Mbps (upstream and downstream speeds are usually different). Unlike the dial up, it doesn't block the telephone line.

Advanced Template Manager
This application has been designed for more advanced website designers who want to use highly customizable templates which can be edited by applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash MX and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Visit www.templatedemo.com to view templates.

ALIAS
When referring to EMAIL ADDRESSES, an alias is simply an alternative address for an email box. For instance, you can set up the mailbox "bobp@domain.com" and then create "bpalmer@domain.com" to send all its mail to "bobp@domain.com". Bpalmer@domain.com is an alias.

Alt Tag
HTML tag used to display alternative text for an image. This is useful if your visitor does not have images enabled in their browser or is using software to assist with the reading of your web pages.

Announcer
Announcer is an easy way for you to keep your customers or friends up-to-date with what's new and exciting on your website.

Anonymous FTP (Anon FTP)
A method for downloading and uploading files using FTP protocol without having a username or a password. In place of a username, word "anonymous" is used, and in place of a password, email address is usually used. If a hosting plan offers this service, your users will be able to download or upload files with FTP without having their own account.

Anonymous re-mailer
A SMTP server that allows sending anonymous email messages. It removes or changes the "From" field of all messages that it processes.

Appointment Scheduler
The Appointment Scheduler allows the end-user or their customers to schedule appointments online.

ANSI
American National Standards Institute. The U.S. standards organization.

Apache
Apache is an open-source HTTP Web server software. It is usually run on Unix operating system versions like Linux or BSD, but it can also be run on Windows. It is a full-featured server with many powerful add-ons freely available. Apache's major competitor is Microsoft's IIS.

Application Server
Also called an appserver. A program that handles all application operations between users and an organization's backend business applications or databases. Application servers are typically used for complex transaction-based applications. To support high-end needs, an application server has to have built-in redundancy, monitors for high-availability, high-performance distributed application services and support for complex database access.

Archie
An online database of anonymous ftp sites and their contents. It allows to search the ftp repositories using file name queries.

ARJ
One of the most popular compression formats.

ARPA
(Advanced Research Projects Agency) US governmental organization responsible for creating the ancestor of today's Internet.

ARPAnet
Network created by ARPA in 1969. The precursor to the Internet. Landmark packet-switching network established in 1969 by the US Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking that would survive a nuclear war.

ASCII
(American Standard Code for Information Interchange). A standard for coding text files. Every character has an associated number and any text can be represented by a sequence of numbers.

ASP(Active Server Pages )
A proprietary Microsoft NT scripting language which may be used to enable web pages to interact with online databases. ASP files, which provide Web developers with an easier, faster, and more powerful way to build Web applications, are regular HTML pages with embedded scripts. These scripts can be written in any language and processed by the server when the file's URL is requested.

ASPDB-FREE
While you can use many methods to display database information on the web, the ASPdb-Free COMPONENT gives you options for the table layout and is relatively simple to use.

ASPDNS
ASPDNS is an ASP COMPONENT that allows you to look up IP ADDRESSES and host names from a WEBSITE.

ASPEmail
While you can always add a link to your email address on your website, the ASP COMPONENT ASPEmail allows you to have a form automatically send an email. The advantage of using ASPEmail as opposed to some other email COMPONENT is two-fold. First, you can send attachments with ASPEmail. For instance, if you have an option on your form to get more information about a specific topic, you can set ASPEmail to send an attachment based on the topic your visitor chooses. Second, ASPEmail lets you queue the email. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you fill out a form, there's a notice that it may take up to "XX" minutes to be submitted, and to please wait? If your form is sending email and you use ASPEmail, you can at least eliminate the wait for the email to send. ASPEmail can send your email to a queue on the server which will then send out the emails. The ASPEmail queue is set to check for queued messages every 5 minutes, so there will be little or no delay in the receipt.

ASPEncrypt
ASPEncrypt is an ASP COMPONENT that allows you to easily ENCRYPT data on your website such as email, information entered into your database, and more.

ASPHttp
The ASPHttp ASP COMPONENT allows you to put the HTML contents of a specific URL into an ASP string. It supports GET/POST/HEAD documents via the HTTP PROTOCOL, examining response headers, transferring requests to a file (including binary transfers) and password authentication support. It can also be used to create DYNAMIC INCLUDES.

ASPImage
Using the ASPImage COMPONENT, you can create images directly on your website. For instance, you could have a customer fill out a simple form, asking them for their name and their favorite color, and then ASPImage can use that information to create a banner that welcomes them by name to your site. This is just one example; there are many other ways this component can be used.

ASPMail
While you can always add a link to your email address on your website, the ASP COMPONENT ASPMail allows you to have a form automatically send an email. If you'd like an email COMPONENT with more features, you may want to consider ASPEMAIL.

ASPPOP3
Using the ASPPop3 ASP COMPONENT, you can read your email directly from your website. You can use ASPPop3 to create your own email INTERFACE, customized to your site.

ASPTear
An ASP COMPONENT for tearing web pages off web servers. The component supports many functions, including retrieval of documents as strings, immediate saving to disk, extensive SSL support, proxy Server support, page caching, redirection support and extended cookie functionality.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode. International standard for cell relay in which multiple service types (such as voice, video, or data) are conveyed in fixed-length (53-byte) cells. Fixed-length cells allow cell processing to occur in hardware, thereby reducing transit delays. ATM is designed to take advantage of high-speed transmission media such as E3, SONET, and T3.

Audio Streaming
The delivery of audio files from a server to a web browser in a continuous stream of small packets rather than one large file.

AU
Audio file format for Unix systems.

Authentication
The process of identifying an individual, usually based on a username and password.

Auto-responder
Auto-responders allow you to automatically return a pre-set message whenever a selected mailbox receives a message. It will also notify a selected mailbox of the receipt and response.

AVI
Audio/Video Interleave. Audio file format used by Microsoft Windows.