This page was created to further your understanding of web design jargon & related wording that you will encounter in this site and elsewhere.
This glossary's intention is to be relevant and beneficial to your understanding rather than be comprehensive.
While this glossary will grow over time, if you have any questions (whether it's help you're seeking or advice you are suggesting), please feel free to contact us.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Alt text - alt text means alternative text. This is recommended for any images you have on your website. Since search engines and some users can not read images well, you can let them know what it is by defining alt text to represent it. (Sometimes when you hover over an image you will see the alt text pop up near your mouse cursor).
Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time.
On the Internet, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps). A hosting server will allocate your site a fixed amount of bandwidth usage within a regular period of time.
Browser − Often called a Web browser, it is simply a software application used to interpret HTML commands and display page content. The three most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), FireFox and Google Chrome.
CMS [Content Management System] - A web CMS is a tool designed to simplify the publication of web content to web sites, allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML
Content − A word you'll likely see around a lot is "web content" and by definition, content is the 'stuff' that makes up a web site. This could be words, pictures, images or sounds. In essence however, when we talk about web content, we are essentially referring to content in a textual nature. Content therefore is the 'information' in text form a web site provides.
CSS [Cascading Style Sheets] − A simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. Not all browsers (of specific versions) implement the full specification of CSS.
Description - or web page description is a Meta tag in HTML code of a Web page. Most Search Engine display the content of this tag in the serch results under the URL.
Domain Name − An unique name that identifies one or more IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs' to identify particular Web sites. Every web site is located by its unique IP address.
Top
Ecommerce - The buying and selling of products and services over the internet. Sites can have very simple ecommerce set up by having a “buy now” button from Paypal or Google, or be very complex by having a full blown shopping cart .
Email Spamming - The practice of sending unsolicited bulk email.
FTP [File Transfer Protocol] − One of the common methods of transferring files over the Internet. A typical method used for uploading files (pages) to a hosting server for viewing on the Internet.
Hits − Are the individual requests a server answers in order to render a single Web page completely. The page document itself and the various images on the page represent a separate hit.
Home Page − It is a first page (also referred as an opening page, start page or Landing page) of a Web site. This would technically be your index page or default page of your directory.
Hosting − Usually refers to a computer (or a network of servers) that stores the files of a web site which has web server software running on it, connected to the Internet. Your site is then said to be Hosted.
HTML [HyperText Markup Language] − HTML is a basic markup language derived from the Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), providing the means for creating simple hypertext documents, intended for publishing on the World Wide Web.
Top
ISP [Internet Service Provider] - It is the company that provides you access to the Internet. Some ISPs provide dial-up access, other ADSL or cables.
JavaScript − JavaScript is an object-based, client−side scripting language developed by Netscape. Embedded in the head section of a web document, It can produce interactivity to a web page dynamically.
Keyphrases - key phrases are groups of words that a user might search for in a search engine.
Keyword - A word or phrase that you type in when you are searching for information in the search engines.
Keyword density - Denotes how often a keyword appears in a Web page or in an area of a page. In general, higher the number of times a keyword appears in a page, higher its search engine ranking. However, repeating a keyword too often in a page can lead to that page being penalized for spamming.
Top
Link [Hyperlink] − An element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document. Typically, you click on the hyperlink to follow the link. Hyperlinks are the most essential ingredient of all hypertext systems, including the World Wide Web.
Meta Tag − A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed.
Outbound links − outbound links are hyperlinks on one website, that link to other websites.
PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] − A server−side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Designed for Windows and Unix type platforms.
Top
Ranking − The number (order of ranking; ie 1 being the highest) that a web site is listed for a specific search term in a specific search engine. Search Engines utilize a ranking algorithm (mathematical formulas, variables, and set of weights) to determine a site's ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.
WEB Spamming - Using any search engine ranking technique which causes a degradation in the quality of the results produced by the search engines. Examples of spamming include excessive repetition of a keyword in a Web page, optimizing a page for a keyword which is unrelated to the contents of the Web site, using invisible or tiny text, etc. Most search engines will penalize a page which uses spamming. Also called spamdexing.
Search Engine − A server (computer) or commonly a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages, storing the results in a giant database and returning lists of pages which match particular searched queries from within its database. The indexes are normally and automatically generated using spiders.
SEO [Search Engine Optimisation] − The analysis and implementation of techniques that enables your website to perform better in search engine result pages.
Server − A computer, program or process which responds to requests for information from an user. On the internet, all web pages reside on servers (computers).
Sitemap - A site map can refer to a page on your website that includes hyperlinks to ALL of your web pages, or it can refer to the sitemap one would send to google (or other search engine) that lets the search engine know of each page you have (sometimes referred to as an xml sitemmap).
Spider − An automated software robot that continuously crawls hyperlinks and pages on the Internet and collects data that is returned to its database for indexing. This is how Search Engines function. The process of crawling the web, storing URLs' and indexing keywords, links and text, is the act of Spidering.
Traffic − Similar to a real−world sense of traffic on a road or freeway, traffic in a web−sense is a measurement of the amount of users that visit a Web site.
Top
URL [Uniform Resource Locator] − Each separate page accessible on the Web has a unique address which can by identified by it's URL. The first part of the address (eg; http or ftp etc) indicates what protocol to use, and the second part specifies the IP address or the domain name where the resource is located.
Validation − Validation is a way to make sure that your (HTML) code is compliant with current HTML specifications.
Web Address - See URL and Domain Name
Top