Terms Letter: C
C/C++
One of the most popular programming languages. Most of the software programs and application are being written in C/C++. These can also be used for web programming. You can write your own C program and execute it as CGI on your web server after compilation. The advantages of programming in C is that the C programming language is extremely fast.
CA (Certificate Authority)
A company that verifies the identity of merchants and their web sites. It is an organization that issues certificates which identify the web server origin. These certificates are called Secure certificates and are a part of the SSL(https) protocol. This protocol has provides secure communication between a use and a web server by encrypting the data transmission. SSL certificates are usually used on eCommerce sites where a user enters sensible information as login details, credit card information, etc.
Cable Modem
A special modem that is designed to utilize cable TV lines for fast Internet Access. It offers better speeds than a telephone line – up to 1.5Mbps
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A set of style rules that define how to display HTML elements on your web site. CSS are very powerful and give greater control over how your site will look like in a user browser.
CERN
The European Laboratory for Particle Physics located in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1989 CERN developed Web the hyperlink system to help for scientific researchers to exchange documents easily. This was the birth of the World Wide Web (WWW).
Certificate
Digital signature/ID used for secure transactions over the Internet. SSL certificates are issued by Certificated authorities. It is also possible to have self issued SSL certificate. However in such case your browser will produce warnings about the SSL validity.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface. A set of rules that define how a web server will communicate to another software program and how this other program will talk back to the web server. A CGI program can be any Perl, Python, C/C++ application. Even in some setups PHP scripts are running as CGI as well
cgi-bin
A special folder/directory on the web server where you can place Perl/CGI, Python, C/C++ scripts to be executed.
CHAP
Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. It as an authentication protocol that is commonly used in dial-up connections. It is a PPP protocol.
CLI (command-line interface)
An interface that enables you to type executable instructions at a user prompt. It is the opposite of the GUI (Graphical User Interface). Example for operating systems that offer CLI are UNIX, Linux, BSD, DOS
Client
Used to define a computer program running on a user computer that is connecting to a server. Example for a client program will be some FTP program, or email program. They can be referred as FTP client(CuteFTP), email client(Outlook express).
Client/Server
A common network design where the two main parts of the system are the server and the client. A client can be any user with computer or another server. In other word the one that provides the services is the server and the one that receive them is the client. Internet is based on that network architecture.
clustering
A server architecture that connects many small computers to perform a given task. The result is that they behave as one machine. For example Google uses thousands of regular computers to maintain their web site index and deliver search results. Usually this is done for better performance and reliability.
Co-location (colo)
It is a hosting service where a Data center allows you to place your own server in their facility. They provide high-speed connectivity, security, environment, backup power and basic technical maintenance. It differs from a Dedicated server as the user is the owner of the server equipment. He only pays for place and bandwidth to the Data center. Most of the web hosting companies are using co-located servers for their business.
Cobalt RaQ
It is a brand of servers specially designed for web hosting by SUN
ColdFusion
It is a server side application language created by the Allaire Corporation and now owned by Macromedia. It uses HTML-like tags called CFML to enable back-end ODBC database connectivity as well as data manipulation and validation within webpages. It is offered as a feature with windows hosting plans.
Control Panel
In the context of web hosting it is an on-line application that give us the user ability to control many aspects of his web hosting account including, but not limited to: creating mailboxes, setup email forwarding, uploading and editing files, creating sub domains, park additional domains, automated installing of ready to use scripts and programs, managing databases, setup shopping carts. You need to check what exactly is included in a given control panel with the web hosting company you have chosen to go with.
Cookie
It is a file on your computer saved by your browser and accessible by a given web server. It stores information about your visit on a given site. Cookies are used for example for storing user preferences, for maintaining sessions, etc.
Cpanel
CPanel is web based software that is offered by a lot of web hosting companies. Using CPanel you can manage all aspects of your hosting accounts, such as creating mailboxes, uploading files, managing databases, viewing site statistics, installing scripts, creating ftp users, etc
CPU
Central Processing Unit. It is the computer brain – its most important part.
Crawler
Also referred to as a spider. It is an automated program used by search engines to collect data for web sites. A crawler will download your web page and will analyze its content and links. Then it will usually visit each link and so on. The data collected is used for building the search engine index which is used for providing search results to the users.