Web hosting terms, explained simply
Plain-English definitions of the 40+ technical terms you'll meet when buying hosting, registering a domain or migrating a website.
.
.lk domain
Sri Lanka's country-code top-level domain, managed by LK Domain Registry. Available extensions include .lk, .com.lk, .org.lk, .net.lk and .edu.lk. Local businesses use .lk to signal Sri Lankan identity in search results.
B
Bandwidth
The total amount of data your hosting server can transfer to and from visitors over a billing period, usually measured in gigabytes or terabytes per month. Higher-traffic sites need more bandwidth; static blogs rarely use more than 50 GB/month, while busy WooCommerce stores can use 500 GB or more.
C
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A globally distributed network of caching servers that serves your static files (images, CSS, JavaScript) from a location close to each visitor. A CDN like Cloudflare reduces TTFB, lowers bandwidth costs, and protects against traffic spikes.
Cloudflare
A widely used CDN, DNS provider and security service. The free plan offers a global CDN, basic DDoS protection and a shared SSL certificate, making it a popular pairing with shared hosting.
CMS (Content Management System)
Software that lets non-developers publish and update website content. WordPress is the most popular CMS, powering over 40% of the web. Joomla, Drupal and Ghost are alternatives.
cPanel
A Linux-based web hosting control panel that lets you manage email accounts, databases, files, domains, SSL certificates and PHP versions from a single dashboard. cPanel is the most common control panel on shared hosting in Sri Lanka and worldwide.
D
Daily backup
An automated snapshot of your site's files and databases taken once every 24 hours and retained for a rolling window. Lets you roll back from a bad deploy, hack or accidental deletion in minutes.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service)
An attack that floods your server with junk traffic from many sources to take it offline. Quality hosts provide DDoS protection at the network edge so attacks are filtered before they reach your application.
DNS (Domain Name System)
The internet's phone book. DNS converts human-readable domain names like lankaservers.com into the IP addresses servers actually use. You configure DNS through your domain registrar or a third-party provider like Cloudflare.
E
F
H
I
Imunify360
A server-side security suite that scans for malware, blocks brute-force logins and patches PHP vulnerabilities in real time. Included on LankaServers shared hosting.
IP address
A unique numeric address assigned to every device on the internet. Web servers normally use static public IPv4 or IPv6 addresses; shared hosting plans share one IP between many sites, while VPS plans receive at least one dedicated IP.
K
KVM virtualisation
A Linux kernel feature that creates fully isolated virtual machines with their own kernel, RAM and CPU allocation. KVM is the industry standard for production VPS hosting because resources cannot be over-committed the way they can with older container-based virtualisation.
L
M
Malware
Malicious code injected into your website to steal data, mine cryptocurrency, redirect visitors or send spam. Quality hosts scan for malware automatically; you should also keep WordPress core, themes and plugins up to date.
MySQL / MariaDB
Open-source relational databases used by WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Laravel and most PHP applications. MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL and is the default on most modern Linux hosting.
N
Nameservers
The authoritative DNS servers that hold your domain's records. To point a domain at LankaServers you update its nameservers at the registrar (for example ns1.lankaservers.com and ns2.lankaservers.com).
NVMe SSD
A solid-state drive that talks to the CPU over the PCIe bus instead of the older SATA interface. NVMe drives deliver 5–10× the IOPS of SATA SSDs, dramatically reducing database query and page-load times for busy sites.
P
Page load time
The total time from when a visitor clicks a link to when the page is fully interactive. Google's Core Web Vitals target sub-2.5-second Largest Contentful Paint; hosting speed (TTFB) is the foundation of meeting that target.
R
Reseller hosting
A hosting plan with WHM access that lets you create individual cPanel accounts for clients. Used by web designers and agencies in Sri Lanka to host multiple client sites under their own brand.
S
Snapshot
A point-in-time copy of an entire VPS disk. Snapshots are useful before risky upgrades — restore the snapshot if something breaks.
SPF / DKIM / DMARC
DNS-based standards that prove your outgoing email really came from your domain. Properly configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC records dramatically reduce the chance of mail going to spam and protect your brand from spoofing.
SSD
A solid-state drive that uses flash memory instead of spinning platters. Even SATA SSDs are 5–10× faster than HDDs for random reads; NVMe SSDs are faster still.
T
TLD (Top-Level Domain)
The last part of a domain name, e.g. .com, .net, .lk, .io. Generic TLDs (.com, .org) are global; country-code TLDs (.lk, .uk, .ae) signal a specific country.
TTFB (Time To First Byte)
The number of milliseconds between a browser sending a request and receiving the first byte of the server's response. A good TTFB is under 200 ms; anything over 600 ms slows down everything else on the page.
TTL (Time To Live)
How long, in seconds, a DNS record is cached by resolvers before being re-queried. Lower TTLs propagate changes faster (useful when migrating); higher TTLs reduce DNS lookups.
U
Uptime
The percentage of time your site is reachable in a given period. 99.9% uptime allows for roughly 43 minutes of downtime per month; 99.99% allows for under 5 minutes.
V
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
A virtual machine on a physical host with dedicated CPU, RAM and storage allocated to you. VPS plans deliver predictable performance, root access and the ability to run any Linux software, at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated server.
W
WAF (Web Application Firewall)
A filter that inspects HTTP requests and blocks common attacks like SQL injection, XSS and credential stuffing before they reach your application. Cloudflare's WAF and Imunify360's mod_security rules are common examples.
Website migration
Moving an existing website (files, database, email and DNS) from one host to another. LankaServers offers free migration for cPanel-to-cPanel transfers; manual migrations involve backing up files + database, importing them on the new host, and updating DNS.
WHM (WebHost Manager)
The administrative companion to cPanel. Resellers use WHM to create, suspend and delete individual cPanel accounts and to set quotas and feature lists.
WHOIS
A public directory of domain-name ownership information. WHOIS Privacy (included free on LankaServers domains where supported) replaces your personal contact details with the registrar's, protecting you from spam.
WooCommerce
A free WordPress plugin that turns any WordPress site into a full eCommerce store. Memory-hungry — start on a Pro/Business shared plan or a VPS for stores with more than a few dozen daily orders.