Web Hosting Glossary,Terms Letter: P

Terms Letter: P

Page
In contexts of Internet it is a basic HTML document. Web sites usually have many web pages.

PAP
Password Authentication Protocol. Authentication protocol that allows PPP peers to authenticate one another.

Peer-to-Peer network
A network in which there are no dedicated servers or hierarchy among the computers. All computers are equal and, therefore, known as peers. Generally, each computer functions as both client and server.

Perl
Stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It is an Open source CGI scripting programming language. Written in 1987. Still one of the most popular web programming languages mostly due to its powerful text-manipulation facilities. A lot of Perl scripts are available for free download across the Internet

PHP
PHP (recursive acronym for «PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor») is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies.PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, many Unix variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS, and probably others. PHP has also support for most of the web servers today. This includes Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Personal Web Server, Netscape and iPlanet servers, Oreilly Website Pro server, Caudium, Xitami, OmniHTTPd, and many others. For the majority of the servers PHP has a module, for the others supporting the CGI standard, PHP can work as a CGI processor.

PKZIP or PKUNZIP
Popular compression and decompression programs.

Plesk
Plesk is another web based control panel, similar to CPanel provides an easy way for a web hosting user to manage his account, to create mailboxes, upload files, etc.

Plug-in
Usually a small software program that adds new features to an existing application. For example the Flash player is a plugin for the Netscape browser.

POP
Post Office Protocol. Also know as POP3. POP3 is an electronic mail protocol used to retrieve messages stored on an Internet/intranet e-mail server. Whenever a client wants to check for messages it connects to its Internet Service Provider’s e-mail server and uses POP3 to login to its mailbox and download its messages.

Port
On the Internet port often refers to a number that is part of a URL, appearing after a colon (:) right after the domain name. Every service on an Internet server listens on a particular port number on that server. Most services have standard port numbers, e.g. Web servers normally listen on port 80. Services can also listen on non-standard ports, in which case the port number must be specified in a URL when accessing the server.

PPP
Acronym for «Point to Point Protocol», refers to the standard by which Internet connections are maintained on computers without a direct link to the Internet, but using a modem and standard phone line. If you’re connected to the Internet at home, you’re probably connecting by way of a PPP account.

Protocol
A set of standards used by two computers to communicate and exchange information with each other. The TCP/IP protocol suite is the basis of todays Internet.

Python
Python is an object oriented high level scripting language