When a visitor opens your website, the web browser sends a request to the web server, which in turn executes it and provides the required content as a response. A basic HTML site uses very little resources as it's static, but database-driven platforms are more demanding and use much more processing time. Every single page that is served creates two kinds of load - CPU load, which depends on the span of time the web server spends executing a specific script; and MySQL load, which depends on the amount of database queries created by the script while the end user browses the Internet site. Bigger load will be generated if a whole lot of people look through a particular website all at once or if many database calls are made simultaneously. 2 good examples are a discussion board with thousands of users or an online store in which a visitor enters a term inside a search box and a large number of items are searched. Having detailed data about the load your website generates will enable you to boost the content or see if it's time for you to switch to a more powerful type of hosting service, if the Internet site is simply getting very popular.