If you're just starting to build your first website, it's likely that you're discovering all sorts of terminology that is unfamiliar to you. Even if you've been working on websites for a while you might encounter a term you haven't heard before. To help you make the most of your free web page, we're bringing you a list of definitions to web hosting terms, acronyms, and other words you may come across.

Website: A website is a collected group of files and pages hosted on a web server and published to the Internet.

IP Address: IP stands for "Internet protocol." An IP address, or IP number, is a number that identifies each computer connected to the Internet.

Domain Name: Domain names identify websites by pointing to particular IP addresses. A domain name must be unique and is the familiar address of a website. For instance, www.freeservers.com is a domain name.

URL: URL stands for "uniform resource locator." It is the address of a page on the internet. For instance, http://www.freeservers.com/ is a URL.

Web Hosting: Web hosting stores a website and delivers its pages so that they can be viewed by anyone connected to the Internet. Free web hosting is web hosting services that are provided by the host to the user for free.

Web Server: A web server can be either a computer program that receives a request from a web browser and serves the requested page in response or a computer that runs the computer program that performs this function.

Shared Hosting: In shared hosting, or virtual hosting, the files for several websites are hosted on the same web server.

Webspace: Webspace is space for data storage accessed via the Internet. It is used most frequently for hosting websites.

Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the amount of data that passes through a connection during a specific amount of time. In web hosting terms, it reflects the amount of traffic that accesses a website.

HTML: HTML is an acronym that stands for "hypertext mark-up language." It is the language through which web servers and web browsers communicate. Web pages are written in HTML, which allows website creators to add formatting, pictures, links, and more.

HTTP: HTTP is an abbreviation for "hypertext transport protocol." It transfers HTML files over the Internet when the host uses an HTTP server program and the user views the files with an HTTP Internet browser.

FTP: FTP stands for "file transfer protocol" and is used to transfer files over the Internet. Uploading or downloading files over the Internet generally involves FTP.

CSS: An acronym for "cascading style sheets," CSS is a language used to control the visual design elements of web pages.

We hope this list of definitions will help you as you build your own website. Freeservers offers free web hosting and paid web hosting options so that you can find the web hosting services that are perfect for you.