This glossary focuses on terms teams actually use when planning infrastructure, troubleshooting incidents, and evaluating providers.
Core Terms
- Uptime: Percentage of time a service is available to users.
- Latency: Time it takes for a request to travel and return.
- TTFB: Time to First Byte; a key server response indicator.
- CDN: Distributed edge network used to deliver static assets faster.
- DNS: System that maps domain names to server addresses.
- SSL/TLS: Encryption layer for secure client-server communication.
- Backup: Copy of data used for recovery after failure or deletion.
- Restore Point: Specific backup snapshot you can recover to.
- Firewall: Rule-based traffic filtering at network or host level.
- WAF: Web Application Firewall for HTTP-level threat filtering.
Application and Operations Terms
- Load Balancer: Component that distributes traffic across multiple instances.
- Autoscaling: Automatic resource adjustment based on demand.
- Container: Isolated runtime package for application deployment.
- CI/CD: Automated build, test, and deployment pipeline.
- SLA: Service Level Agreement defining support and availability targets.
- Incident: Unplanned event that degrades or interrupts service.
- Postmortem: Structured analysis after an incident with corrective actions.
- RTO: Recovery Time Objective, target time to restore service.
- RPO: Recovery Point Objective, acceptable data-loss window.
- Observability: Ability to understand system behavior from logs, metrics, and traces.
Use this glossary as a shared language inside your team. Clear terminology improves architecture decisions and reduces incident confusion.
Infrastructure KPI Baseline
Use a small KPI baseline to keep decisions objective: uptime, TTFB, error rate, and restore time. Regular review of these metrics improves prioritization and prevents reactive firefighting.
- Track weekly response-time and error-rate changes.
- Validate backup success and restoration duration monthly.
- Document recurring incidents and prevention tasks.
Additional terms worth knowing
TTFB (Time To First Byte) — the time between sending a request and receiving the first byte of the server's response. A key metric for user experience and SEO. An Israeli server serving Israeli users gives 30-80ms; an American server gives 250-400ms.
CloudLinux — an OS for shared hosting that isolates resources between users on the same server. Ensures one failing site doesn't impact its neighbors. Standard at serious hosting providers.
LiteSpeed / OpenLiteSpeed — a web server (Apache replacement) that handles requests much faster, especially for WordPress via the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. Available on our managed plans.
Imunify360 — an integrated security solution for hosting servers: file scanning, real-time attack blocking, server- and application-level firewalls. Stops most WordPress attacks at their start.
HTTP/3 + QUIC — a new generation of HTTP that reduces latency on congested connections. Especially effective on mobile. Available with us via LiteSpeed.
Core Web Vitals — three metrics Google uses to score page experience: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Paint), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Hosting speed directly affects LCP.
WHM (Web Host Manager) — server-level management interface (vs. cPanel which manages a single account). Needed for reseller hosting.
DNS Propagation — the process by which a DNS change spreads across the world. Usually takes up to 48 hours, but at modern DNS providers (Cloudflare, AWS Route 53) changes propagate within minutes.
