Hosting terms, explained simply

Hosting comes with a lot of technical terms. This glossary translates the most common ones into plain English. Use it whenever you encounter an unfamiliar word in your hosting dashboard or in our communications.

A

Auto-renewal A setting that automatically charges your card and renews your hosting subscription before it expires. Always turn this on to prevent your site going offline.

A record A type of DNS record that connects your domain name to your server's IP address. See how DNS & hosting fit together.

B

Backup A saved copy of your website's files and database taken at a point in time. If something goes wrong, you can restore the backup to undo damage. See hosting backups.

Bandwidth The amount of data your site can send to visitors per month. Most modern hosting plans have generous or unlimited bandwidth for typical business sites.

C

Cache / Caching Storing a ready-made copy of a page so it can be delivered to visitors instantly, without rebuilding it from scratch each time. Caching makes sites load much faster. See caching on WP Engine or caching on Kinsta.

CDN (Content Delivery Network) A network of servers around the world that stores copies of your site's files and serves them from the location closest to each visitor. This makes your site faster for people far from your main server. See what is a CDN?.

Control panel The web interface you use to manage your hosting account. Each platform has its own: Flywheel's dashboard, WP Engine's User Portal, Kinsta's MyKinsta.

CNAME record A DNS record that points one domain name to another (e.g. www.yourdomain.com → yourdomain.com). See how DNS & hosting fit together.

cPanel A popular hosting control panel used by many shared hosting providers. Not used by Flywheel, WP Engine, or Kinsta, which have their own interfaces.

D

Database A structured store of your site's content — posts, pages, user accounts, settings. WordPress stores almost everything in a database. It's backed up alongside your files.

Data center A physical facility full of servers. Your hosting company operates one or more data centers where your site actually lives.

Dedicated server A physical server used exclusively for your website. More expensive but highly powerful. Usually only needed for very high-traffic sites.

Deployment Publishing a change from a staging or development environment to the live site.

DNS (Domain Name System) The system that translates your domain name (e.g. yourbusiness.com) into the IP address of your hosting server. See how DNS & hosting fit together.

Domain name The human-readable address of your website (e.g. yourbusiness.com). Separate from hosting — you buy it from a domain registrar. See domains & DNS.

Downtime Time when your website is unavailable. Measured as a percentage of total time. See uptime, downtime & what they mean.

E

Environment A version of your website. Most managed hosts give you at least two: a live (production) environment and a staging environment.

F

Failover An automatic switch to a backup system when the primary one fails. Enterprise-grade hosts have failover built in.

FTP / SFTP File Transfer Protocol — a way to upload and download files directly to your server. SFTP is the secure version. Used by developers, rarely by site owners.

G

Git A version-control system that tracks code changes. Some hosting platforms (like WP Engine and Kinsta) support deploying sites via Git.

H

HTTP / HTTPS The protocols used to transfer web pages. HTTPS is the secure, encrypted version — indicated by the padlock in your browser. See what is SSL & HTTPS?.

Host / Hosting provider The company that rents you server space and runs the infrastructure that keeps your site online.

I

IP address A numerical address that identifies a specific server on the internet (e.g. 203.0.113.5). Your domain name points to your server's IP address via DNS.

L

Latency The delay between a visitor's browser requesting your page and the server responding. Lower latency = faster page load start time.

Load balancing Distributing website traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed. Used on high-traffic sites.

Log files Records of server activity — who visited, when, what was requested, and any errors. Useful for debugging.

M

Managed hosting Hosting where the provider handles technical server maintenance, updates, security, and optimization. See what is managed WordPress hosting?.

Migration Moving your website from one hosting provider to another. See what happens when we migrate your host.

MX record A DNS record that tells email servers where to deliver email for your domain. Important: changing hosting does not change your email unless MX records are updated. See hosting vs email.

N

Nameserver A server that holds your domain's DNS records. When you change hosting, you may be asked to update your nameservers.

P

PHP The programming language WordPress is built on. Managed hosts keep PHP updated automatically.

Plan A tier of hosting service with a specific set of resources and features at a set price. See billing guides for each platform.

Production environment The live, public version of your website that real visitors see.

R

Redirect Sending visitors automatically from one URL to another. Managed by server configuration or WordPress settings.

Restore Using a backup to return your site to an earlier state. Usually a one-click process on managed hosts.

S

Server A computer that stores your website's files and serves them to visitors. Managed by your hosting company.

Shared hosting Hosting where your site shares a physical server with many other websites. Cheaper but slower and less isolated than managed hosting.

SSL certificate A security certificate that enables HTTPS encryption. Provided free and automatically renewed on managed WordPress hosts. See what is SSL & HTTPS?.

Staging environment A private, password-protected copy of your live website used for testing changes before they go live. See what is a staging site?.

Subdomain A prefix added to your main domain (e.g. staging.yourbusiness.com). Hosting platforms use subdomains for staging environments.

T

TLS The modern security protocol behind HTTPS. Often used interchangeably with SSL, though TLS is the technically correct current term.

U

Uptime The percentage of time your website is online and accessible. See uptime, downtime & what they mean.

V

VPS (Virtual Private Server) A virtual machine that behaves like a dedicated server but shares physical hardware with others. More powerful than shared hosting, less expensive than a dedicated server.

W

WordPress The open-source content management system (CMS) that powers most of our clients' sites. See what is WordPress?.

Related guides

• What is web hosting?
• What is managed WordPress hosting?
• How DNS & hosting fit together
• What is SSL & HTTPS?
• Uptime, downtime & what they mean