Web Design/World Wide Web Glossary
Accessibility
The degree to which a website is usable by people with disabilities, e.g. a blind user might use screen reading software to read out the page for them. XHTML code which doesn’t validate may prevent their screen reading software from working. Another example could be a colour blind person who needs to differentiate between on screen colours in order to get full use of the website.
Affiliate Program/Website
In the context of online affiliate marketing, an affiliate is an individual or company who drives traffic towards a merchant in exchange for a commission.
ASP Active Server Pages
Microsoft’s proprietary web server scripting language. Uses VB Script, a sub-set of Visual Basic. Generally works only with Microsoft Web Servers, and Microsoft Access Databases. An ASP page is typically made up of HTML code and one or more sections of VB Script, which allow the server to process the code and make decisions before presenting a bespoke version of the HTML to the users web-browser. ASP is sometimes preferred over PHP (A widely used, open source alternative), due to the fact that it’s a Microsoft product and many small to large businesses already have Microsoft servers and software/licenses in place.
Back Link
A link coming from another website to your own. Back links are an important factor for SEO, providing the links are of high quality (from a reputable source with a good score) and the links are relevant to the content of your website, they can greatly improve your websites traffic.
Below the fold
The portion of a web page which you cannot see without scrolling further down the page. Its good practice to keep valuable information above the fold so that it is eye-catching and easily accessible. Also applies to emails (especially in marketing) where you want your audience to see the important information when the first open the email.
Blog
A Blog, (derived from the word weblog), is a diary type website consisting of regular “posts”, often on a particular topic. Blogs are relatively new to the Internet and growing rapidly in popularity due to tools being available to create blogs with little technical knowledge. Blogs are a powerful tool for Search Engine Optimization, due to the fact that if they are regularly updated with new content, search engines give merit for a regularly changing website. Another good thing about blogs that contributes towards SEO is that they are inbound link magnets, blogs can link freely to one another very easily.
Browser (or web-browser)
The computer program which lets a user interact with web pages. Examples include, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome.
CMS or Content Management System
These allow a user who isn’t technical to add/edit/remove information from a live website, without having to get involved with any code. Instead they are presented with an easy to use interface.
CSS or Cascading Style Sheets
Allows a web designer to effectively apply formatting information to a website by creating a single file that can be used by lots of web-pages.
DNS or Domain Name Server/System
DNS is what makes the World Wide Web function. It is the process which will convert a Domain Name into an IP address (this is like a telephone number for the Web Server where the website resides). It means that when you type a website address into your Web Browser it finds out where the website is on the internet so that it can be downloaded to your computer.
Domain Name
The unique string of characters that can be associated with a website or email address. E.g. if you purchased “thisismywebsite.co.uk” you could have the website “www.thisismywebsite.co.uk” and the email addresses “whatever@thisismywebsite.co.uk”
Favicon
A small image that can be saved onto a website so that it appears in your address bar or on your bookmarks/favourites list in your web browser.
Font
The style of lettering which can be applied to a section of text in a web-page.
FQDN or Fully Qualified Domain Name
The Domain Name section of the URL. E.g. www.website.com not the /example/page.html part which specifies the path/location of a specific file on the web server.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. Just like HTTP governs the way websites travel from a web server to a computer, FTP is the protocol responsable for allowing the transfer of files over the Internet, the listing of directories and limited control over a remote file system. It is used by web designers and developers to upload and edit files on web servers.
Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal is a number system used by computers to represent colours, Hexadecimal numbers are very useful to web designers who quite often need to be very specific about a colour.
Heuristics
The rules that describe usable websites. e.g. The home page contains the general information and you can get more specific by following the internal links into sub-pages.
Host/Hosting
The host of a website is the computer on which it resides. E.g. when you type in the web address and hit enter your computer contacts the host/web-server (just a computer which has been tailored for housing lots of websites). The host/web-server then sends the web-page to your computer and it is displayed on screen.
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is the simple markup language (or “code”) which governs the way a website appears in your web-browser. Although all web browsers should interpret HTML code the same, some have discrepancies.
HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
The protocol/rules which apply to data transfer between web servers and your computers web-browser.
HTTPS
The secure version of HTTP. In HTTPS, all communication between entities is encrypted using SSL (Secure Socket Layer), this ensures that any communication can only be read by the sender or the recipient.
HyperLink
A section of text in a web-page which is linked to another web-page, so that when you click it you are taken through to the linked page.
IP Internet Protocol
The unique number given to any computer on the Internet. It is used to identify any computer, including web-servers.
Keywords
In SEO, the keywords are the phrase or phrases that the author deems relevant to the page. They are the words that someone might type into a search engine before finding your page.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Stuffing was a technique which involved loading lots of keywords into meta tags or in content of a webpage. This technique no longer gives web-pages any value as Google and other search engines now have more effective ways of ranking pages.
Link Farm
A Link Farm is a website set up solely for the purpose of having lots of unrelated links to sites, in order to fool search engines into thinking the site has lots of Back Links. Most search engines remove link farms from their directories when they are found, and also penalise any sites that link to link farms.
Meta Tag
A section of a websites HTML code which can contain information that isn’t intended for the reader, but aimed towards databases or search engines (or the author), such as the keywords for search engines, a description, the author etc.
Natural Search Results
Natural/Organic search results are the results of a search produced by a search engine which are based upon the content and relevancy of the web page, as opposed to paid results which website owners often bid on to get their web-page showing in search listings.
Organic Search Results
See Natural Search Results
PHP
Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is the open-source server scripting language native to Linux type web-servers, as opposed to Microsoft’s proprietary version ASP. PHP is the most widely used and respected web scripting language on the Internet. PHP is typically used in conjunction with MySQL type Databases.
Resolution
The number of dots on a computer screen which make up the image. The higher the number of dots, the more that a user can fit on the screen. The users screen resolution is a factor to consider when designing a website, if the page is designed for a screen resolution of 1024×768 for example, a user with a screen size of 800×600 might have to scroll to find information on the page, thus reducing the size of the “fold” (see Below the fold). Even worse, the difference in screen size may affect the way that the page is displayed, making content unreadable.
Script (Or Web-Script)
A simple program/application written that performs a specific task. Proprietary languages include JavaScript, VB Script etc.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization
The process of ensuring a website has been optimized so that search engines promote it more effectively.
Server or Web Server
A computer which hosts one or more websites. When a user downloads a web-page from the Internet it is received from the web-server.
Sub Domain
A Specific portion of a domain name which is often used to direct towards a sub-section of a domain. E.G. http://coaching.rijagroup.co.uk (coaching being the sub-domain), directs towards the Rija Coaching & Consultancy section of our website. Sub-domains rely on the web-server to specify the location of files for that part of the website, rather than using DNS.
TLD/TLDN
Top Level Domain / Top Level Domain Name respectively. TLDNs are the most generic part of a domain name of which two types exist: Country code TLDs and Generic TLDs. Examples include .co.uk or .net
URL Uniform Resource Locator
URLs specify the full location of a web-page or file on the Internet, consisting of the FQDN and the path to the file on the web-server. E.g. http://rijagroup.co.uk/portfolio/index.php
Usability
The level at which a website is easy for people to use. E.g. if a sub section of the site is very easy for a user to find from arriving at the home page then the site is considered usable; however, if the sub section is more than 3 clicks away then the site is probably seen as unusable.
User-Agent
The client software which is used to retrieve a website from the web-server. Typically this would be a web-browser although the software could also be a screen reader, search engine spider, web editor or another kind of program.
Valid Code/Valid HTML/CSS
A website code validity refers to whether or not the code conforms to certain standards, e.g. Version 1.0 Transitional XHTML. Failure to have valid code in a website can result in several unwanted outcomes including a website being inaccessible (for people with screen readers), a webpage not displaying as intended, being penalised by search engines etc.
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium, this is the group of organisations which develop and determine the standards for technology that operates on the WWW.
WWW
World Wide Web, the astronomical network of websites/media that users can access by utilising the Internet.
