Technology

This page is intended to explain some of the technical language used in other parts of the site.

Apache

Apache is a web server. It is the job of apache to take the incoming request for a web page, or a constituent part, such as an image, and either send the file directly or pass the request on to another program to send the file. For example this page has been requested by your browser, which then got to apache and apache was told to run a PHP program to produce the page.

Linux

Linux is a term that is gnerally used for the GNU operating system running on top of the Linux "kernel". Linux essentially controls all the hardware for the GNU operating system to run on. It is a small part of a large package. The large package can be viewed as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows Operating System. Linux is heavily used in the web server sector.

GNU (GNU's Not Unix)

GNU is a collection of programs that together form an operating system. They include commands such as "cp" for copying files and "mv" for moving files.

PHP

PHP is a programming language that is heavily used for building dynamic websites. Dynamic websites are those that change depending upon who is using it, or sites which use a database to produce the content.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an open source relational database. Which can provide enterprise level features to a site. It is well suited to being used with PHP to produce dynamic websites, or web applications.

URL (Uniform Resource Location)

A URL is colloquially known as a "page". It is the text you will find in the "Location" bar of your web browser, examples include:-

http://www.artumi.com/
http://www.google.com/
ftp://www.artumi.com/
rtsp://www.bbc.co.uk/radioplayer/radio1.rpm