Select a letter to view the defination of the terms beginning with that letter.

0-A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

CERN

(Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire) A nuclear research laboratory where the World Wide Web was invented.

Certificate

Digital ID used for SSL transactions.  It includes owner's public key, the name of the owner, the issuer, hostname, and the expiration date.

Certificate Authority

An issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections

CGI

Common Gateway Interface.  A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the 'CGI program') talks to the web server. A CGI program can be written in any language like Perl or C/C++ and it is often stored in a special directory like /cgi-bin.  CGI is often used to process data from HTML forms.

cgi-bin

A directory on the server where the executable CGI scripts reside.

Channel Definition Format (CDF)

A way of defining the server-push channels for accessing frequently changing web content.

Client

A computer program that requests a service from the server program, usually over the network.

Client/Server

A network architecture where a system is divided into two parts: the client and the server.

clustering

Connecting many computers and making them appear as one machine. This is done to increase reliability and performance.

Co-location (colo)

it is a service whereby a company that owns a server houses it in another company's data center due to the greater security, stronger backbone or other technological reasons.

Cobalt RaQ

Server appliance made by Cobalt specifically for hosting companies. 

ColdFusion

Cold Fusion is a scripting language used on web pages to interface with. MS Access, dBASE, FoxPro, and Paradox databases. If you use Cold Fusion, you will usually need a host which uses an NT operating system.

command-line interface

The opposite of the GUI (Graphical User Interface). A way of interacting with a computer system using the keyboard and a text-only display. Usually more powerful, but less user-friendly thatn a GUI.

Control Panel

Control panel included in web hosting packages is an online web-based application that allows you to easily manage different aspects of your account.  A Web site Control Panel provides a simple user interface for maintaining and monitoring your Web site. Features of the Control Panel vary among providers, but most include site administration, design, statistical reporting, and account maintenance tools.

Cookie

The most common meaning of 'Cookie' on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online shopping cart information, user preferences, etc.

CPU

Central Processing Unit. The most important part of the computer.