Web hosting glossary | WP Masquerade

A

Apache HTTP Server

Apache HTTP Server, usually just called Apache, is a free, open-source web server developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It receives browser requests, serves…

C

CDN

A CDN (content delivery network) is a set of servers spread around the world that keep cached copies of a website's files and serve…
Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting refers to computing resources (virtual servers, storage, databases, platforms) provided on demand from a provider's shared infrastructure, adjustable quickly and billed by…
CloudLinux and CageFS

CloudLinux is a Linux operating system built for shared hosting. With LVE, it caps each account's resources (CPU, memory, disk I/O, processes); with CageFS,…
cPanel

cPanel is a web hosting control panel for Linux servers, used by many shared hosting providers. Paired with WHM, the server administrator's interface, it…
Cron (and WP-Cron)

Cron is the job scheduler of Unix and Linux systems: it runs commands at set times based on a table called a crontab. WP-Cron…

D

Dedicated server

A dedicated server is a physical machine rented to a single customer, who gets all of its processors, memory and drives, with full administrator…
DirectAdmin

DirectAdmin is a web hosting control panel for Linux servers, known for being lightweight, that organizes access into three levels: admin, reseller and user.…
DNS

DNS (Domain Name System) is the internet's distributed directory: it translates a domain name such as example.com into an IP address and provides other…

H

Hotlinking

Hotlinking (or direct linking) means displaying on one site an image, video or file hosted on another site, by pointing straight to its URL…
htaccess file (.htaccess)

The .htaccess file is a configuration file read by the Apache web server, and by LiteSpeed, in the directory where it sits and in…
HTTP/2 and HTTP/3

HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 are the recent versions of the web's protocol. HTTP/2 carries many requests in parallel over a single TCP connection, as binary…

I

IIS (Windows Server)

IIS (Internet Information Services) is Microsoft's web server, built into Windows Server and Windows. It runs PHP through its FastCGI module and php-cgi.exe, and…
Inodes

An inode is the structure that describes a file or directory on a Unix or Linux file system: type, permissions, owner, size, timestamps and…

L

Let's Encrypt

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated certificate authority run by the nonprofit ISRG. It issues TLS certificates that validate control of a domain through…
LiteSpeed Web Server

LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is a commercial, event-driven web server designed as a drop-in replacement for Apache: it reads Apache's configuration and .htaccess files.…

M

Managed hosting

Managed hosting means entrusting all or part of the management of an IT system to an outside provider: server administration, updates, monitoring, backups or…
MySQL and MariaDB

MySQL and MariaDB are two relational database management systems, using the SQL language, where WordPress stores posts, pages, settings, accounts and orders. MariaDB started…

N

Nginx

Nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) is an open source, event-driven web server that also works as a reverse proxy, load balancer and HTTP cache. Light on…
nginx.conf

nginx.conf is the main configuration file of the Nginx web server. It's organized in nested blocks called contexts (events, http, server, location) that describe…

O

OPcache

OPcache is the PHP extension that keeps already compiled script code (the opcodes) in shared memory. PHP no longer needs to read and parse…
OpenLiteSpeed

OpenLiteSpeed (OLS) is the open source edition, under the GPLv3 license, of the LiteSpeed web server. Event-driven and equipped with a built-in page cache…

P

PHP-FPM

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is PHP's official FastCGI process manager. It runs groups of PHP processes, called pools, that receive the scripts passed on…
Plesk

Plesk is a web hosting control panel that runs on Linux and Windows Server. It lets you manage a server and its sites from…

R

Redis and Memcached (object cache)

Redis and Memcached are in-memory data stores that WordPress uses as a persistent object cache. They keep the results of database queries and other…

S

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is a setup where many websites, owned by different customers, share the same server and its resources: CPU, memory, disk and software.…
SSH and SFTP

SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol that opens an encrypted session on a remote server so you can type commands there. SFTP (SSH File…
Staging environment

A staging environment is a private copy of a live website, on the same kind of server, used to test updates, new plugins, theme…

T

TTL (DNS)

The TTL (Time To Live) of a DNS record is the number of seconds a resolver may keep the answer in its cache before…

U

Uptime and SLA

Uptime is the time during which a service, such as a website or a server, is available, expressed as a percentage of a period.…

V

VPS (virtual private server)

A VPS (virtual private server) is a virtual machine created on a shared physical server, with its own operating system, reserved resources and full…

W

WP-CLI

WP-CLI is the official command-line interface for WordPress. From a terminal, often over SSH, it can do almost everything the admin area offers, and…

#

3-2-1 backup rule

The 3-2-1 backup rule means keeping three copies of your data (the original and two backups), on two different types of media, with one…

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