Here are the words you'll meet when you set up a website, in plain English. For how they fit together, and who to contact about each one, see My domain, my website, my hosting and my email: who does what?
Your website's address
Domain name: your website's address, such as yourbusiness.com. Every website has its own. You rent it a year or more at a time, and it stops working if you don't renew it. You can register a domain with us or with another company.
Registrar: the company where you bought or renew your domain. It could be us, or a company such as GoDaddy or Namecheap. Your domain can stay with one company while your website is hosted with another.
Nameservers: the setting at your registrar that tells the internet which company runs your website and email. You'll see two of them, such as ns15.ragesw.com and ns16.ragesw.com. After you change them, it can take up to 48 hours to update across the internet, though it usually happens within 6, depending on your internet provider (ISP). Until then you may see your old website. See Point your domain to EverWeb Hosting (update nameservers / DNS).
DNS: the internet's address book. It turns your domain into the address of the server that holds your website, and tells mail where to go. Each line in it is a DNS record. Services such as Google or Mailchimp sometimes ask you to add a record. If your nameservers point to EverWeb Hosting, send us the record and we'll add it.
Your website
Hosting (web host): the company whose computers keep your website online all the time. With EverWeb + Hosting, that's us. With EverWeb Standalone, you choose any host.
Server: one of those computers. "Our servers" means the computers your website and email are on.
Project file: the copy of your website you edit in EverWeb. It's saved on your own computer, not online. See Where is my website? Your live site and your project file.
Publish: sends your website from EverWeb to your hosting, so people can see it.
FTP: a way of copying files to a server. You only need it to publish to another company's hosting. EverWeb + Hosting doesn't use an FTP password: you sign in to your EverWeb account instead. See What is FTP or an FTP server, and do I need it for EverWeb?
SSL and HTTPS: what gives your website the padlock in the browser and a web address starting with https://. An SSL certificate encrypts what visitors send you. Websites on our servers have a certificate. You turn HTTPS on in EverWeb with Site Shield. See My site says 'Not Secure': how to get HTTPS (SSL) on your website.
Browser cache: your browser's saved copy of websites you've visited. It can show you an old version after you publish. See How to clear your browser cache in Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.
Your email
Email account: an address with its own mailbox and password, such as [email protected]. You read it in webmail or a mail app. See Create an email address with your own domain (EverWeb + Hosting).
Email forwarder: an address with no mailbox of its own. It passes every message on to another address, such as your Gmail. It's useful when you want an address at your domain but don't want another inbox to check. With EverWeb + Hosting, you make one on your hosting plan's page in the Client Area, under Email Forwarders.
Webmail: reading your email in a web browser, at yourdomain.com/webmail, using your own domain.
Your account
Client Area: your EverWeb account page at billing.ragesw.com/clientarea.php. Here you pay invoices, renew, register domains, and manage your hosting and email. You sign in with the email address on your account and your EverWeb account password.
Control panel (cPanel): older hosting accounts had a separate cPanel login. With us, those tools are now in the Client Area. See How can I access cPanel or my Control Panel?
Not sure which password is for what? See Which password is which?