Hosting Glossary : Part 3

Terms: Hidden Text - robots.txt

• Hidden Text
  A controversial and not recommended practice of hiding content or stuffing keywords into a web page which is visible to search engine spiders and bots, but appears to be absent by human viewers. Hidden text can be accomplished with style sheets or by manipulating the HTML to make text color the same as the background. Keyword stuffing and Hidden Text is rumored to have negative impacts on a site using these techniques.
• Hosting
  Hosting (also known as Web site hosting, Web hosting, and Web hosting) is the business of housing, providing a server, and maintaining files for one or more Web sites.

• HTML
  Hyper Text Markup Language is comprised of regular text that has been "Marked Up" to instruct how the page should be interpreted. HTML is used to organize content of web pages, not to control how the content looks etc. The introduction of CSS 2 has made HTML programming much easier with display elements now being controlled by the Style Sheet.
• ICANN
  The not for profit organization responsible for managing the internet's domain name system, including IP address space assignments.
• InterNIC
  The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC). Funded by the National Science Foundation, the InterNIC provides services such as access to an archive of Internet standards documents and the assignment of IP addresses for the Internet community.
• IP Address
  The numeric address (composed of four numbers separated by dots) of a computer connected to the Internet - also called Internet address. An example of an IP address is 192.168.2.1.
• Merchant Account
  A "bank account" established with a payment processor for the settlement of credit card transactions. Any merchant who wants to take credit card orders must establish a merchant account. Internet merchants need a "Card Not Present Merchant Account."
• ODBC
  Open DataBase Connectivity - which is typically only used on Windows hosting servers is the standard interface for communications from a program to a database. ODBC connections can be defined within your Control Panel Software.
• POP
  Post Office Protocol is the standard method for sending and receiving email messages. Commonly today people will receive emails with POP access, and send emails using SMTP.
• Referrer
  Sometimes used in affiliate marketing - and other times in simply tracking traffic, the referrer is the web page or location that directed you to the existing page. Referrer information is stored in the temporary memory of your browser and is accessible from Server Side Scripting Languages like PHP or ASP.
• robots.txt
  A text file located in the root directory of your web site written to instruct search engine robots and spiders where they are allowed to crawl. robots.txt files can be bot specific or written to include all robots who follow robots.txt files.