Website Design Glossary
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domain name
A unique website name, registered with Internic, usually ending in .com, .net,
.gov, .edu, org, etc. Also referred to as URL or website address
email address
A unique address for sending and receiving email, i.e., [email protected]
- automatically chosen when setting up an ISP account and when setting up a
domain name - protected by account name and password when configuring your browser
or email software
homepage
The first page of your website.
HTML
Acronym for Hyper Text Mark-up Language.This is the code used to make your website
pages appear the way you want them to - used by the designer and webmaster to
create your pages
hyperlink
A word or image which, when mouse-clicked, takes you to a page with more information
- same as link
image
A logo, photograph, custom graphic, map, animated graphic. Too many and the
page takes too long to download.
Internic
A database of registered domain names, regulated so that only the website administrator
or website technical contact can make changes. These are the people who make
sure there are no duplicate website domain names. There is about a $35 per year
charge for you to keep your domain name, and you must renew it before it expires.
ISP
Acronym for Internet Service Provider. The account you set up so you can connect
with the Internet.
keywords
Any word or phrase that has particular significance to the content of your website.
When someone uses a search engine to find information you have, your website
should be suggested in response to the search query when your keywords are used.
link
A word or image which, when clicked, takes you to a page with more information
- same as hyperlink
meta tag
Text in the coding of the HTML structure of your page, which the user does not
see - most commonly used are the "description" and “keyword”
meta tags. The first is a maximum 25-word sentence, the second is a list of
search terms or keywords. Search engines and directories use these meta tags
as one method of indexing or finding websites.
online
You are connected by dial-up, DSL or cable to the Internet. (Some companies
may have more powerful connections.)
page
Roughly an 8.5" x 10" printed page, including text and images.
search engine
Like a huge index of all the wesites on the Internet. It returns results when
keywords are entered as search terms.There are thousands of search engines,
some good and some not so good. I submit websites to the 20 most popular ones
.
server
the computer holding files that are accessed by your (or anyone else's) computer
when you are connected to the internet (online) and have typed in a valid URL
URL
short for Universal Resource Locator, same as website address or domain name
webmaster
the person in charge of your website maintenance
website address
same as domain name or URL
website administrator
a person registered by you with the Internic as a contact able to make changes
to your domain name information. This might be used if you change web hosts,
for example, or if something about your domain name changes. The registered
technical contact do this also.
website hosting
a service provided by a company who owns the server where your website pages
are stored
website maintenance
all the work done with the website once it has been placed (uploaded) to the
server. Can include making changes to the images or content and submitting to
search engines and directories by the the webmaster (not all webmasters do the
extra work of search submissions)
website technical contact
a person registered by you with the Internic as a contact who can make changes
to your domain name information.
Active X - A front end development language which can also interface with databases via ODBC. It is a similar language to JavaScript.
Applet Application - A small program that can be sent along with a Web Page to a user. Java applets can perform interactive animations, immediate calculations, or other simple tasks without having to send a user request back to the server.
ASP ( Active Server Pages) - A common language supported by Microsoft, which allows the querying of an access database over the Internet.
Auto Forwarding - A calling card for e-mail, which sends any user sending you an e-mail, a message such as contact information or a confirmation.
Bandwidth - The width of a band of electromagnetic frequencies. Used to mean how fast data flows on a given transmission path. It is expressed as data speed in bits per second (bps).
Banners - The basic unit of advertising on the Web.
Binary - A numbering scheme in which there are only two possible values for each digit: 0 and 1. In digital data memory, storage, processing, and communications, the 0 and 1 values are sometimes called "low"and "high," respectively.
Bit - Short for binary digit. The smallest unit of data in a computer. In most computer systems, there are 8 bits in a byte. Half a byte or 4 bits is called a nibble.
Bitmap - A mapped array of pixels that can be saved as a file. GIF and JPEG are examples of graphic image file types that contain bitmaps. It cannot be immediately rescaled by a user without losing definition.
BMP (Windows Bitmap) - This is the standard file format used by Microsoft Windows.
Browser - An application program that provides a way to look at and interact
with all the information on the World Wide Web.