WWW GLOSSARY

WWW Glossary

We have compiled a list of the most commonly used phrases in the web industry. This is by no means a full listing of all terms, just a few of the common ones that are often misunderstood. If you are looking for more information or have further questions, feel free to contact our web experts.

Ajax: Allows web applications to send and retrieve data from a web server without changing the display and behavior or the web page.

Alternate text: Text assigned to an image to convey the information if images are turned off or if a screen reader is being used.

Analytics: Internet data that is collected, measured and analyzed to help understand and optimize website visitors and usage.

Bandwidth: A measurement for the speed of an internet connection. The more bandwidth available, the faster the data will be processed.

Banner ad: Online advertisement which involved embedding an advertisement in a web page.

Bounce rate: The amount of site visitors whom only visit one web page and leave within 30 seconds.

Cache: Copies of web pages are stored on a computer's hard drive by a web browser or server.

CTR (click through rate): The amount of times visitors have clicked on a link or ad in a page as a percent of the times the page has been displayed.

Cloud: Instead of data and apps being stored on a computer, they are stored over the internet.

Cookie: Data stored on your computer by a web browser. This data is stored to provide visit information to the website at a later visit.

CSS (cascading style sheets): A language used to define styles for web pages and documents. Things like font, width, color are all CSS styles.

Database: Data contained in a computer which allows computer programming to retrieve and manipulate it.

Domain name: The unique name used to identify a website. (i.e. Webduckdesigns.com)

Flash: A form of multimedia used on the web. Flash animation is made up of multiple images that display in a format similar to a video.

Footer: A listing of all website pages, usually located at the bottom of a web page. The footer links help spiders to crawl all pages in a website.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol): A common method of sending files between two computers.

Hits: The amount of times an object (web page or image) on the web is viewed or downloaded.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The language used to define a web document's content, layout and formatting. HTML tags are used by web browsers to define how the page is displayed.

Iframe: Iframes are used on a web page to display content from another web page. Iframes can often go unnoticed as they are able to look like part of the web page they are embedded in.

IP Address: A unique number used to identify each computer on the Internet.

JavaScript: A scripting language used on the Internet.

Landing page: A web page used to target specific visitors. For example, an advertisement when clicked might bring users to a landing page of information created just for them.

Link title: A title tag given to links in web pages. Link titles are viewable when hovering over a link.

Linux: A computer operating system, often used when developing PHP based websites.

Meta tags: Meta tags are added to web pages to describe the page. Things like keywords and description tags are used by search engines to determine what each web page is about.

MySQL: Open source database software which is used on the Internet.

PHP: PHP is made up of server executable scripts widely used on Linux platforms.

Redirect: When a web page is automatically forwarding to another web page, it is being redirected.

Sandbox: Websites that get thrown to the end of searches by Google are often referred to as sandboxed. While Google doesn't confirm such existence, there are many things that can be done to prevent a website from being sandboxed.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Is designing and building a website around the known search engine algorithm values, to obtain the best possible search engine ranking.

Sitemap: Sitemaps contain a list of all pages in a website used to point robots to crawl all of the web pages.

Spider: A program written to search the Internet for web pages. Search engine spiders, like ones used by Google are used to index the web. Also known as robots and crawlers.

SQL: A computer language used to access and manipulate databases.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer): SSL certificates provide secure communications over the Internet. These are commonly used in ecommerce sites which are transferring credit card data from one server to another.

Unique visits: A visitor who is coming to, viewing, a website for the first time.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The URL is a web address (i.e. https://www.webduckdesigns.com).

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): The main standards for the Internet.