Hosting Terms
What is HTTPS?
What HTTPS really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.
Straight answer first
HTTPS is ordinary HTTP carried over an encrypted connection — the web's normal transport, keeping everything between browser and server unreadable and unaltered.
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
0
Terms left unexplained
100+
Definitions, cross-linked
Real
Examples from real kit
Free
To read, naturally
The certificate makes it possible and TLS does the actual work. Browsers now treat plain HTTP as the odd case: they flag it, they withhold features that only work on secure pages, and they try the secure address first when you type a domain.
Moving a site across is a well-worn routine. Install the certificate, update the site URLs, put 301 redirects in place, then sweep out any mixed content still loading over HTTP. After that, HSTS can pin browsers to the secure version for good.
The everyday comparison
Sealed envelopes replacing postcards. Same postal network, same vans, but nobody along the route can read the contents or slip a page in, and the seal itself proves who sent it.
Comparisons simplify, naturally — but this one holds together well enough to reason with, and reasoning is the whole point of a glossary.
What is actually at stake
HTTPS is the entry requirement now, for trust, for rankings and for features. Payment fields, modern browser APIs and most useful JavaScript simply refuse to run without it, and its absence is a warning label pinned to your brand.
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.
HTTPS out in the open
A login form served over HTTPS travels encrypted through café wifi, a hotel router and every hop between. The password is readable only at the far end, where it was meant to arrive.
Multiply that example by every website on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description in one go.
The Hosting Seller angle
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: SSL Certificate, TLS, HTTP Status Codes and Encryption.
Mailboxes on your own domain are part of the plan, never an add-on sold back to you at checkout.
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.
Real people answer the counter at any hour, including the awkward questions other hosts wave off as out of scope.
- 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
One term, fully landed
HTTPS defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
The next reads, mapped
Read on into SSL Certificate and TLS — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.
The stakes spelled out
Not only what it is, but when it turns out to be the answer to a problem you are having.
Pictures that stick
Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.
Honest about what to skip
Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.
Linked, never siloed
Related terms cross-reference each other, so one lookup grows into a working understanding.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Find it in your own account
The quickest way to learn a hosting term is to find it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading about it.
- 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 — SSL Certificate, TLS and HTTP Status Codes finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing
- Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
- The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
- cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
- One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Does HTTPS slow the site down?
Barely enough to measure. Modern TLS costs very little processing, and HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 — which in practice require HTTPS — usually make a secure site quicker than its old insecure version. That argument changed sides years ago and has not changed back.
If a site is on HTTPS, is everything about it secure?
The transport is, and that is the claim. HTTPS protects data while it moves. It says nothing about the quality of the site's own code, the strength of your passwords, or what a compromised plugin might be doing. It is one necessary layer among several.
Who actually runs the company?
Hosting Seller is a trading name of Bohzo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales — a real business with a public record and terms published under English law. Looking that up is worth doing about any host before you hand over your domain.
Can I bring a domain I already own?
Yes, and transfers in are routine. Unlock the name at your present registrar, collect the auth code, then start the transfer from your client area. Whatever registration time is left comes across with it, and DNS keeps answering the whole way through.
What happens to my files if I leave?
The site and the files stay yours. Pull a full backup from the panel whenever you like, before or during cancellation. Domains remain registered in your name for the term you paid for and can move to any registrar once the standard 60-day window has passed.
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.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
Read next
HTTP Status Codes
HTTP status codes are the three-digit verdicts a server attaches to every response it sends — 2xx it worked…
SSL Certificate
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