Understanding
Web Site and Web Design Jargon
(A Quick Web Glossary)
SolveYourProblem.com Article Series: Web Site Design
Don't know your HTML from your HTTP? Your
cache from your cookies? The web has serious amounts of jargon,
and it seems like people come up with new words almost every
day. Most of it isn't especially useful, but there are some
words that it's good to know to help you along on the web.
Here are the essentials. Apache. The most popular web server. It is open source and
free for anyone to use.
Blog. A short for 'weblog'. A web page that is updated like
a diary, with the most recent writing first. Usually done using
blogging software instead of being maintained by hand.
Browser. A web browser is the software that you use to view
pages on the web. Internet Explorer is the most common browser.
Cache. A web browser's cache is where it keeps files that
it has downloaded from the web and might need to use again.
A site's logo and navigation graphics may be stored in the
cache, for example, so that they don't have to be downloaded
again each time you go from one page of the site to another.
This happens automatically.
Cookies. Small files that websites can store on your computer
to let them 'remember' you. When you log into a website and
you're still logged in when you go back there later on, that's
because the site gave your browser a cookie.
Favorites. Also known as Bookmarks, this is a place in your
browser where you can save links to pages that you'd like to
visit again.
Flash. A browser plug-in developed by Macromedia that displays
animations and animated websites.
FTP. File Transfer Protocol. The usual method of uploading
files from your computer to a web server.
HTML. Hypertext Markup Language. The language that web pages
are written in.
HTTP. Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Theoretically, the way
that HTML pages are sent between a server and a browser, although
in practice HTTP is used for sending all sorts of data, including
graphics and file downloads. Many files should really be provided
using FTP, but HTTP is considered to be easier and faster.
IIS. Internet Information Server. Microsoft's competitor to
Apache, comes with versions of Windows that can be used as
web servers. Often considered to be somewhat insecure and prone
to crashing, although recent versions have improved.
ISP. Internet Service Provider. The company or institution
that provides your computer with access to the Internet, usually
in exchange for a monthly fee.
Link. A link is some text on one web page that will take you
to another page if you click on it.
MySQL. MySQL is a free, open source database. It is often
used for smaller web applications and websites.
Open
source. Open source software is software which makes
its source code freely available. This is intended to give
you more freedom to modify the software however you want (or
pay someone to modify it for you), instead of tying you to
a company and relying on them for updates. In practice, this
means that the software is available for download at no cost.
Visit www.opensource.org for more information.
PDF. Portable Document Format. A document format that aims
to reproduce text exactly the way it would appear on a page.
Viewable in web browsers using a plug-in, but disliked by many
users because it can be very slow.
PHP. Stands for 'PHP: Hypertext Processor'. A very easy to
learn and easy to use scripting language that is one of the
most common on the web, helped along by the fact that it is
also free. It is most often used in quite simple ways, such
as retrieving text from a database and adding it to a page.
URL. Uniform Resource Locator. A technical term for a whole
web address, such as http://www.example.com/page.html. It is
called uniform because you can use similar addresses to refer
to entirely different kinds of resources: for example, file://c:/windows
refers to your Windows folder, and ftp://ftp.example.com/public_html
refers to a folder on an FTP server.
W3C. The World Wide Web Consortium (three Ws and a C, so W3C).
This is the standards body that is considered to be 'in charge'
of the web, and decides what gets put in and taken out of the
various versions of HTML, amongst other things.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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