Unix Web Hosting FAQ

What is Unix Hosting?
What is Shared/Virtual Hosting?
What is PHP?
What is Perl?
What is MYSQL?
How can I edit a mySQL database table without creating an application?

What is Unix Hosting?
A. Unix is an operating system developed by Bell Labs in the 1970's. It is a popular operating system that is used by many companies all over the world. Most web hosting providers use a unix based OS called FreeBSD on their shared hosting servers.

Your personal computer's operating system does not affect your ability to use a Unix server for hosting. Having a Windows system at home does not mean you must have a Windows Hosting account. A unix account will work just as well.

What is Shared/Virtual Hosting?
A. Shared Hosting refers to a hosting package where two or more customers share the same server (computer). This is the least expensive way to get a real web site.

What is PHP?
A. PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language.

PHP is a tool that lets you create dynamic Web pages. The web pages with PHP enabled are treated much like regular html pages.

In an HTML document, PHP script (similar syntax to that of Perl or C) is enclosed within special PHP tags. As PHP is embedded within tags, it does not have to rely on heavy amounts of code to output HTML. Also, PHP code cannot be viewed by the client as the script is executed on the server.

PHP can perform any task any CGI program can, but its strength lies in its ease of use. PHP can talk across networks using IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or HTTP.

What is Perl?
A. Perl is a programming language that was created to primarily process text. It is widely used as a rapid prototyping language that makes it possible for different systems to work well together.

It is also the most popular language used for the Custom Gateway Interface. With this support, you are able to use various Perl scripts that will allow you to open your store, chat room, newsgroup, classifieds, etc. There are countless numbers of pre-made scripts that can be found on the Internet.

Perl's roots are in UNIX. Because Perl is an interpreted language, Perl programs are highly portable across systems.

What is MYSQL?
A. MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once.

Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.

You can use MySQL with PHP and/or Perl. MySQL and PHP have become the dynamic duo of Open Source, data-driven Website creation.

How can I edit a mySQL database table without creating an application?
A. Cpanel allows you to use phpMyAdmin to edit mySQL tables through the use of SQL query language.