Hosting Glossary
A Record
A Record in plain English — the definition, the analogy, and why it matters to anyone who runs a website.
The short answer
An A record maps a hostname directly to an IPv4 address — the DNS entry that tells browsers which server actually holds your website.
The sections below unpack it properly — how it works, why a site owner should care, and a concrete example of it in the wild.
0
Jargon left unexplained
100+
Linked definitions
Real
Platform examples
Free
To read, obviously
It's the workhorse of web DNS: example.com → 203.0.113.10. The AAAA record is its IPv6 sibling; together they're how names become routable destinations.
Multiple A records for one name round-robin between addresses — a crude load-spread, and also the classic accident when an edit adds instead of replaces.
A picture that makes A Record stick
The line in the directory that gives the actual street number — every other entry can alias or refer, but somewhere the name must land on a real address.
Analogies simplify, of course — but this one holds up well enough to reason with, and reasoning is the point of a glossary.
Why you should care
When pointing domains at hosting without full delegation, the A record is the pointer you'll set — and when a site 'randomly' alternates between old and new servers, a duplicate A record is the usual culprit.
That's the test for every technical term, incidentally — not 'do I understand it fully' but 'do I know when it's the answer to my problem'. For this one, now you do.
What it looks like in practice
Keeping DNS at a third party, an owner points just the website here with one A record to our server's IP — mail and other records staying untouched where they are.
Multiply that example across every site on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description.
How this shows up in your hosting
You'll meet it in the control panel and occasionally in a support conversation — usually already configured the right way. If this term made sense, the natural next reads are CNAME Record, DNS, IP Address and Nameserver.
Support is answered by real people around the clock — including the questions other hosts call out of scope.
Why we wrote a hundred definitions
Every confusing term in hosting eventually becomes a support ticket — so we defined the hundred most common ones properly, once, in the plain English we'd use on the phone.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching are standard here, not premium-tier extras.
- 100+ terms, plain English
- Analogies and real examples
- Cross-linked related concepts
- Written by the support desk
Why HostingAlly
What you get with every plan
Plain English first
Every term defined for site owners, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated, not restated.
Linked, not siloed
Related terms cross-reference, so one lookup becomes a working understanding.
The practical stakes named
Not just what it is — when it's the answer to a problem you're having.
Analogies that stick
Each concept gets a picture you'll remember at the moment you actually need it.
Grounded in a real platform
Examples reference the hosting you'd actually use, not abstract diagrams.
Honest about what you can skip
Most terms are recognise-level, not operate-level — the glossary says which is which.
Getting Started
How to get going
- 1
Spot it in your own setup
The fastest way to learn a hosting term is to find it in your own panel — five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading.
- 2
Check the defaults
Our platform ships sane defaults for this — verify rather than assume, and you'll know your setup instead of hoping about it.
- 3
Follow the related terms
Concepts travel in packs — CNAME Record, DNS and IP Address complete this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
Included
What's covered on our plans
- Free domain for the first year on annual plans
- Free SSL certificate on every plan, renewed automatically
- NVMe SSD storage as standard
- LiteSpeed server-level caching
- One-click installer for WordPress and 400+ apps
- SSH, Git and Composer access on developer-friendly plans
- 99.9% uptime commitment, monitored around the clock
- Free website migration handled by our team
- cPanel — the industry-standard control panel
- Renewal prices that match signup prices
FAQ
Your questions, answered
A record or CNAME — when does each apply?
A points to a numeric IP; CNAME aliases to another hostname (inheriting its destination). Use A for direct-to-server pointing, CNAME for services that publish a hostname precisely so their IPs can change beneath it.
My A record change isn't taking effect — why?
Either caching (the old TTL still running), the edit happened at non-delegated DNS, or a second conflicting record survives. Those three cover effectively every case; check them in that order.
What happens if I outgrow my plan?
You upgrade in place — plan changes apply from your client area without migrations or downtime, and our range runs from small shared plans through VPS to dedicated servers, so growth is an account change rather than a new-host project.
Where is your company based?
HostingAlly is a trading name of Bohzo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales — a real, verifiable business with published terms under English law, which is worth checking about any host before you hand them your domain.
Can I host more than one website on a plan?
On the Pro tier and above, yes — multiple sites with their own domains, email and SSL under one account. If the extra sites belong to clients rather than you, reseller hosting gives each one proper isolation instead.
What does your 24/7 support actually cover?
Real people at every hour, and a scope that includes the practical questions — email setup, DNS, WordPress issues, restores — not just 'the server is up, ticket closed'. Pre-sales questions are welcome too; ask us something difficult and judge the reply.
Do you include email with hosting?
Yes — mailboxes on your own domain come with every hosting plan, with webmail, IMAP/POP/SMTP access and spam filtering. Standalone email hosting also exists for domains whose websites live elsewhere.
Keep exploring
CNAME Record
A CNAME record makes one hostname an alias of another — the name resolves to wherever its target currently …
IP Address
An IP address is the numeric identifier that locates a machine on a network — the actual destination behind…
Domain Names
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