RIOT STUDIO — HOSTING & DOMAIN GLOSSARY
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Plain English for the words your developer keeps using.

DOMAIN — your web address (e.g. riot.studio). You rent it yearly from a registrar.
REGISTRAR — the company you buy/rent the domain from (Namecheap, GoDaddy, 123-reg).
DNS — the address book of the internet. Tells browsers where your domain points.
A RECORD — points your domain to an IP address (a server).
CNAME — points your domain to ANOTHER domain (e.g. www -> root).
MX RECORD — tells the world where your email lives (Google Workspace, Outlook).
TXT RECORD — small notes attached to your DNS, used for verification (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
NAMESERVER — which DNS provider runs your DNS records (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.)
TTL — time-to-live. How long DNS records are cached. Lower = faster updates, more lookups.
HOSTING — the actual server that stores and serves your website files.
SHARED HOSTING — many sites on one server. Cheap, slow.
VPS — virtual private server. Your own slice. Faster.
EDGE / CDN — copies of your site cached worldwide. Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify.
SSL / TLS — the padlock. Encrypts traffic between visitor and server.
HTTPS — HTTP with SSL on. Mandatory in 2025.
SSH — secure shell. How devs log into servers.
FTP / SFTP — old way of moving files to a server.
CMS — content management system (WordPress, Webflow). Lets you edit without code.
SUBDOMAIN — a prefix on your domain (shop.riot.studio).
REDIRECT (301) — permanently sends one URL to another. Keeps SEO juice.
PROPAGATION — the time DNS changes take to spread worldwide (10 min - 48 hours).