Question:
What is a Mega-Byte?
Answer:
A Mega-Byte is 1,0240,000 Bytes. For administration and billing purposes a Mega-Byte is considered to be 1,000,000 Bytes.

Question:
What is Web Hosting?
Answer:
Web hosting is the act of renting space and bandwidth through a company so that you may publish your web site on-line.
You can either opt for free hosting that is usually supported with banners and pop ups, or may opt to get paid web hosting, which gives you complete control over your site contents.

Question:
What is a Domain Name?
Answer:
A domain name is a word along with a TLD that uniquely identifies your website.
Please visit our domains page for more information.

Question:
How Do I Register a Domain Name?
Answer:
Registering a domain name is very easy.
First you will have to make sure that the domain you want is available - using something called a WHOIS look-up at sites like Register.com or Whois Source you can make sure the domain you want is available for registration.
Afterwards, you simply need to visit a registration site such as DirectNIC or Register.com to purchase your domain name.

Question:
What do I need to do to put Flash on my website?
Answer:
Flash is a client side feature - it runs on the user's computer, not on your web host. As long as the user's browser has the correct plug-in installed, it will run on their computer.

Question:
How do I track how many hits my website gets?
Answer:
There are a few things that need to be cleared in terms of terminology:

* Hits - this simply refers to the number of 'elements' loaded on your site. If one page has five images in it, viewing that page once adds 6 hits (one page + five images).
* Impressions - the number of times all the pages on your site are seen (also simply called pageviews). Impressions are sometimes referred to as 'hits' which can cause confusion
* Unique - the number of people that visited your site
So to clarify, if I visit your website, look at two pages, and each page has 5 images on it, then your stats increase by one unique, two page views, and 12 hits.

Tracking on your site can be either done server-side or remotely. With server-side statistics, log files are used to generate visitor information. This is usually much more accurate than remotely hosted solutions. In such cases, you usually have to add some JavaScript to your site. This JavaScript is then used to track visitor data.
If your host provides it (and many do), server-side statistics are a good solution. Otherwise, companies like Site Meter can be used to remotely track your visitors.

Question:
What is Domain Parking?
Answer:
Domain parking lets you buy a domain and then have a 'coming soon' page on it. This is not needed - if a domain is not parked it will simply be inaccessible to anyone.
Most domain registrars provide this by default.

Question:
What are subdomains?
Answer:
Consider subdomains as an extension of your domain. For example, your site is www.example.com. A subdomain would be test.example.com, and another would be webhosting.example.com.
Subdomains are usually treated as separate sites from the main domain site.

Question:
What is uptime?
Answer:
Uptime is literally what it means - it is the amount of time your site is on-line throughout the entire month.
The best uptime would be 100%, but because things can break, many hosts offer 99.9% uptime guarantees. This means that if your site is not accessible for more than 43 minutes in a single month, they will reimburse you, depending on their terms of service.

Question:
I am using too much bandwidth! Is there anyway for me to make it less?
Answer:
In most cases, yes.
You should first try to optimize the graphics on your website. Many GIFs look just as good with fewer colours, and many JPEGs look just as good with a higher compression level. NetMechanic offers an image optimizer program on-line.
You should also analyse the HTML of your site. Make sure you use relative paths, so that images are not downloaded more than one time. Remove any extra spacing and when linking to other pages, use relative paths and not absolute links.
While many hosts already have it, you could also see if your host has mod_gzip installed. This can save you a lot of bandwidth.
Best of all, optimizing your page like this makes the user experience better as your site will load faster for them!

Question:
Do I have to change my domain if I get a new host?
Answer:
No. Provided that the domain is registered in your name (as it should be), you can simply update your nameservers (from where you manage your domain names) to that of your new host.

Question:
What are PHP, ASP, perl, etc?
Answer:
These are all programming languages which are referred to by their acronyms.
PHP - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
ASP - Active Server Pages
Perl - not an acronym
Each programming language has its own benefits and uses. It is best that you research on your own to find one that best fits your needs.

Question:
What is MySQL, MS SQL, etc?
Answer:
MySQL and MS SQL are database systems. Depending on what your host provides, you can use a database to organize your data.

Question:
Will there be forced advertising on my site - things like banner ads or popup ads?
Answer:
Not at all. You are paying for webspace that is only yours - no one may put ads on your site except you.

Question:
I have been prompted to renew my notes certificate. How do I do this?
Answer:
Click here for instructions on notes certificate renewal.