Hosting Terms

What is Cache?

Cache in plain English — the meaning, the comparison, and why it matters to anybody running a website.

Straight answer first

A cache keeps the result of expensive work ready to hand out again — pages, query results and assets served from memory instead of being rebuilt for every visitor.

The sections below open it up properly — how it works, why a site owner should care, and a concrete example of it doing its job.

Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026

Terms left unexplained

100+

Definitions, cross-linked

Real

Examples from real kit

Free

To read, naturally

A web stack caches at several heights. Page caches hold finished HTML, object caches such as Redis hold database results, OPcache holds compiled PHP, the browser holds assets on the visitor's own machine, and a CDN holds copies close to where people are.

Every layer makes the same trade against freshness, and every layer therefore needs a way to be cleared when content changes. That is why 'my edit is not showing' is nearly always a cache doing its job a little too faithfully.

Cache, by comparison

A bakery that bakes its bestsellers before the doors open. The queue moves at the speed of handing things over rather than the speed of the oven, and the skill is knowing when yesterday's tray has to go in the bin.

Comparisons simplify, naturally — but this one holds together well enough to reason with, and reasoning is the whole point of a glossary.

Why this one is worth knowing

Caching is the biggest single speed lever in hosting. A cache hit answers in microseconds what computation answers in hundreds of milliseconds. Once you know the layers, performance stops being mysterious and starts being configuration.

You do not need to work at this layer every day. You need to recognise it when it explains something, which is exactly the moment this page earns its keep.

What it looks like day to day

An article goes round the internet and ten thousand readers all receive the same cached copy. The server built the page once and spent the rest of the day simply handing it over.

Perfectly ordinary once you have seen it, which is rather the point: most hosting concepts are simple machinery wearing an intimidating name.

How this turns up in your own account

On our hosting this largely looks after itself — the platform applies sensible defaults, and the panel hands you the controls when you want them. The concepts worth reading next: LiteSpeed, Redis, CDN and OPcache.

Bring an existing site and we shift it across at no charge — usually inside 24 hours, with nothing going dark while we work.

Why we bothered with a hundred definitions

We treat unexplained jargon as a service failure. This glossary is the support desk's accumulated translations, published where a search engine can hand them out for us.

Backups run every day on every plan, and putting a file or a database back takes one click from the panel.

100+ terms, all in plain English
Everyday comparisons and real examples
Related concepts linked together
Written by the people on the desk

Why Hosting Seller

On every plan, as standard

Plain English first

Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.

The next reads, mapped

Read on into LiteSpeed and Redis — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.

One term, fully landed

Cache defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.

Honest about what to skip

Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.

Grounded in real kit

Examples point at hosting you would actually use, not at an abstract diagram.

Pictures that stick

Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.

First Steps

From choosing to live

1
Find it in your own account
Open the control panel and find where this concept lives — seeing it attached to your own site is what turns a definition into understanding.
2
Check what the defaults are
Confirm how your account has this set. It is usually right by default here, and now you will know rather than guess.
3
Follow the terms next door
Concepts travel in packs — LiteSpeed, Redis and CDN finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.

In the Box

Packed with every plan

One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications
A domain free for year one when you order annually
A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you

Across the Counter

The questions we get asked most

Why is my change not showing on the site?

Some layer is still handing out the version from before you edited. Purge the site cache first, then force a refresh past your browser's own copy. If a CDN sits in front, purge that too. Your caching plugin lists the layers; clear them from the inside outwards.

Can caching break a site that is dynamic?

It can if it is configured carelessly, which is why baskets, checkouts and logged-in pages must be excluded — and are, in any proper setup. Configured well, the dynamic parts stay dynamic while everything around them gets served instantly.

Does hosting come with mailboxes?

It does — mailboxes on your own domain ship with every hosting plan, with webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP access and spam filtering fitted as standard. There is also standalone email hosting for domains whose website lives somewhere else entirely.

What does round-the-clock support actually stretch to?

People at the counter at every hour, and a scope that takes in the practical work: mailbox setup, DNS records, WordPress trouble, restores. Not 'the server responds, ticket closed'. Ask us something hard before you order — the reply is a fair sample of what you would get afterwards.

Do you shift an existing site across at no charge?

We do. Open a ticket with the login details for your current host and the whole lot comes over: files, databases, mailboxes and configuration. You check the copy before DNS changes hands, and the old site keeps serving customers until the new one takes the traffic, so nobody ever sees a gap.

Can I set the PHP version myself?

Yes — PHP versions are chosen per site from the control panel, so an old application and a current one can sit side by side on the same account. Extensions and per-site settings live in the same screen, and none of it needs a support ticket.

Can one plan hold more than a single website?

From the Pro tier upward, yes — several sites, each with its own domain, mailboxes and certificate, all under one account. If those extra sites belong to clients rather than to you, reseller hosting is the better fit: it gives each one proper separation.

Packing up and moving host? Take our checklist.

A plain running order for a move nobody notices: what to copy first, how to carry email across without dropping a single message, when to point DNS, and the two slips behind nearly every hour of downtime we get called about.

Start on a plan with a plain price tag.

From a first website to a rack of servers, moving up is a change to your account rather than a migration.

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