Glossary Entry
What is API?
API without the jargon — the definition, the analogy, and why any site owner should care.
The short answer
Two pieces of software need an agreed way to talk, and an API is that: a fixed contract for passing data and issuing commands with nobody standing between them.
The rest of the page opens it up — the mechanics, why a site owner should care, and one concrete example of it at work.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Jargon left undefined
100+
Entries, all cross-linked
Real
Working examples
Free
To read, always
Web APIs run over HTTP. Send a request to an endpoint and structured data comes back, almost always as JSON. Your site plays both parts: it calls payment gateways, mapping services and data feeds, and it publishes data of its own, as WordPress does through its REST API.
Keys and tokens are how the caller proves who it is. They authorise actions in your name, which makes them exactly as sensitive as a password and worth the same care.
The everyday parallel
An ordering window with a printed pad. Hand a request through in the agreed format and the result comes back to you. You never enter the kitchen and never find out how the sauce was made.
Carry that picture with you and most documentation on the topic loses its mystery on a first read.
Where it touches your own site
A modern site is a set of APIs stitched together: checkout, email, analytics, stock, shipping. See the pattern once and neither the integrations nor their failure modes stay mysterious.
That, incidentally, is the bar for any technical term — not 'could I lecture on it' but 'would I recognise it as the answer to my problem'. For this one, you now would.
One worked example
Somebody marks an order as shipped and the courier's API is called. A label comes back, a tracking number is stored, the order status moves. Three systems finish a conversation in about two seconds.
Entirely unremarkable once you have seen it — which is the point: most hosting ideas are plain machinery behind an intimidating label.
Where it appears on this platform
You will meet it in the control panel and now and then in a support thread, usually already set correctly. If this one landed, the natural follow-ups are Webhook, PHP, WordPress and Encryption.
Hosted somewhere else already? We move the whole site at no charge, usually within 24 hours, and it goes on answering visitors throughout.
A jargon buster from the people who answer the tickets
Sooner or later every confusing hosting term turns into a support ticket, so we defined the hundred commonest ones properly — once, in the same plain English we use with customers.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is on us.
- 100+ entries, plain English all the way
- Ordinary analogies, working examples
- Neighbouring ideas linked together
- Written by our own support engineers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Jargon-free by design
Definitions written for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — translation rather than restatement.
Analogies that hold
Every concept comes with a mental model that returns exactly when you need it.
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into Webhook and PHP — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
Clear about how deep to go
Most of these are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and every entry says which it is.
Cross-wired entries
Related terms point at each other, so one lookup compounds into working knowledge.
This term, properly landed
API defined, pictured by analogy and located in your own panel — recognise-level after a single read.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Nothing teaches a hosting term faster than finding it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading.
- 2
Check the defaults as they stand
The platform ships sensible defaults for this — check rather than assume, and your setup becomes something you know instead of hope.
- 3
Chase the neighbouring terms
Hosting terms travel in groups — Webhook, PHP and WordPress finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when you change plan
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
How do APIs affect my hosting?
In two ways. Your code makes outbound calls, which need network access and sensible timeouts so a slow third party cannot hold your pages hostage. In the other direction, outside systems hit endpoints of yours, and those want HTTPS and authentication. Each of them is ordinary web traffic wearing a structured costume.
How careful should I be with an API key?
Treat it as a credential, because it authorises software to act in your name. Give it password treatment: never in version control, scoped to the narrowest permissions that will do the job, and rotated as soon as you suspect it has escaped. Behind most 'our integration was hacked' stories is a key that ended up in public.
Is there a safe place to try changes?
Yes — plans with staging let you copy the live site, work on the copy, then publish it once it behaves. That turns 'hope the update works' into 'know it works' before a single customer meets it.
Can I choose the PHP version myself?
Yes — PHP is set per site from the control panel, so a legacy application and a current one can run side by side in one account. Extensions and per-site tuning are on the same screen, and none of it goes near a support ticket.
Keep reading
Encryption
Encryption turns readable data into noise only the right key can undo, and it is the mathematics beneath HT…
WordPress
WordPress is the open-source platform behind roughly four in ten websites, and the default answer for anybo…
Best API Backend Hosting
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