Accessibility | In web design making a site accessible involves, just as in the offline world, ensuring that the site is accessible to peoples of all ability and disability. For example 'alt' attributes should be provided in <img> tags to help blind users who use text readers; written transcripts of audio for deaf users, etc. Many sites e.g. government information sites are expected to have a high degree of accessibility. Some countries, including Ireland, have addressed this issue at governmental level . |
Blog | A blog (full name weblog) works a bit like an online magazine or newsletter. In it's simplest form a writer would upload a new article every day and readers would log in to check this out and write comments on it. In practice blogs can have multiple writers, and may have content uploaded either more or less often. Good ones are updated daily or weekly, but some are virtually static. Fans often use blog readers or RSS feeds to help them check which of their favourite blogs have something new on them. Technorati is a large site which tracks blogs. Many large companies also maintain one or more blogs. |
Content | Content is simply the text and other media on a site. The term is often used in discussions on S.E.O. because content is important to search engines, and also in discussions on both site design and C.M.S.'s because of the separation of content from design & layout. |
C.M.S. | C.M.S. means a Content management system. In it's simplest form, a site based on a C.M.S. allows non-technical personnel to change the content of the site. In practice C.M.S.'s usually incorporate other aspects or allow for expansion e.g. the ability to maintain a site membership, newsfeeds etc. |
C.S.S. | Cascading Style Sheets. The web is mainly written in 2 languages, HTML and CSS (there are many others). CSS defines the styles, that is: colours, layout, fonts, size of text etc. |
Domain Name | www.myname.com and newsite.ie are both examples of domain names. They point to a website. newsite.ie is the domain as it is registered. The actual domain usually becomes www.newsite.ie but the owners can use any amount of subdomains e.g. shop.newsite.ie or jobs.newsite.ie etc. There can be more than one domain name pointing to the same site. For instance a business could own both the .com and .ie versions of the same name. Domain names are usually only expensive in special situations however charges are payable yearly. Names ending in com, net, org and others are cheap and easy to set up; country specific names (.ie) are slightly more and in the case of .ie need some information to prove a right of ownership. More here . |
Ecommerce | Ecommerce is the process of selling online. This can be anything from a simple paypal button for a single product to having a complex shopping cart system on your site. Payment is handled by payment gateways which can process credit and debit cards.
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Flash | Flash is a popular way to add animation to a website. Flash can make up either the entire website, or just a small part, for instance flash banners are popular.
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Forum / BBS | A forum (or internet forum) is a type of website where members post a new topic and then other members can add comments to this. Very often this is in the form of a question-answer. Some topics may only be one or two posts but often discussions arise, with some conversations going on over months or even years. Most forums have rules and generally speaking both the forum itself and the individual topics initiated stick to the subject; and so "off topic" posting is usually strongly discouraged. |
Hosting | A website must be 'Hosted' on the Internet. Hosting companies specialise in this. Many web design companies also have hosting capabilities for their clients. Hosting charges are separate from design charges as they are payable yearly, and are often coupled together with domain name charges. Quality of hosting can vary considerably and can influence things such as site speed, reliability, uptime and the languages which can be used during site construction. Hosting is usually based on either "Windows" or "Linux" with the majority of websites on "Linux" powered servers. Hosting can be: Dedicated, Shared or V.P.S. Dedicated hosting is where a complete server (computer) is dedicated to a site, typically very busy sites operate this way. A site on shared hosting shares a server with hundreds or thousands of other sites - this is the most common hosting. A V.P.S. is a "Virtual private server" and in this setup a large server is divided into smaller virtual blocks which are independant of one another. This is much cheaper than decicated but much better quality than shared. |
H.T.M.L. | Hyper text markup language. This is the core language that makes up the web. Fundamentally, ordinary text is 'marked up' with tags which create: Links, Bold text, Headings, Italics, etc. Since it's development however extra functionality has been added with elements like tables, objects and images. Modern web standards place an emphasis on separating content from style, and so many html attributes have been deprecated so that CSS would be used instead. HTML should carry the content and CSS carry the styling. |
I.S.P. | Internet Service Provider. The company that supplies Internet, e.g. Broadband or dialup to a home or business. |
Link/Hyperlink | Full name - "hyperlink". A link is an element (normally an underlined word) on a webpage which when clicked upon will move you to somewhere on the Internet. For example, this is a link to the rainrain.com website help blog . It is also possible to link using other objects, e.g. photos. Links are what make the Internet work. |
Mailing list | A mailing list is a way to keep in touch with customers / site members. This can be separate from the website, but many sites can maintain a membership list for the webmaster who at any stage can build a newsletter or other piece of marketing and have the site mail it out to the full membership list. |
Search Engine | For instance Google or Yahoo. Used for finding sites on the Internet. Google is the most popular but there are lots of search engines; many of which are dedicated to individual fields or tasks such as image search etc. |
S.E.O. | Search engine optimization. This is the practice of making a page or site look good to search engines like Google to achieve higher rankings. Some of this is based on the code written by the designer; however it also has a lot to do with the actual written content on the site, along with certain other things, for instance the title of the page, headings used, domain name / U.R.L. Traditionally 'meta keywords' were the most important aspect but this is not the case anymore, mainly due to abuse of the <meta> tag. S.E.O. is a moving target and what works today may not be so tomorrow. |
Static Site
| A static site is a website which can only be changed if a designer changes the code. This is the case with the majority of websites. The difficult nature of changes means that the sites often remain 'Static', in contrast with content managed websites where the owner can easily make changes themselves. |
Streaming media | To stream media as opposed to download it means for instance in the case of a video that the video starts to play before it is completely downloaded. This means that the user need not wait for the download to complete to begin watching. Music download sites for example normally use streaming media for a song preview but then when a purchase is made, a regular download is used instead as the song has been auditioned at this stage. Streaming is also used for live webcasts and live radio broadcasting. |
URL / URI
| Uniform Resource Locator/Identifier .. Very similar to a domain name - but relates more to a page rather than a site, and carries a scheme name such as 'http' or 'ftp'. E.g. for domain name "mysite.com"; examples of URL's would be http://www.mysite.com and ftp://www.mysite.com/downloads
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Usability | Describes how usable a website is. Related to user-friendly and ergonomics. A usable website should be easy to understand, efficient, and not make surfers work harder than necessary. Link and navigation structure should be logical and intuitive. The site should be easy to grasp and need minimum action to get appropriate and understandable results. |
Web 2.0 | The term web 2.0 is often used as an umbrella term to collectively describe a new level of interactivity and collaboration on the web powered by technology such as Blogs , Wiki's, Social networking sites, Social bookmarking etc. It is a somewhat debated term because it can give the false idea that there is a new version of the Internet but in reality the majority of the technology which enables this new interactivity existed quite a bit before the term was coined. In practice it more describes a revolution in Internet use, perception and popularity than it does a new technology. |
Wiki | Wiki is the Hawaian word for "fast". A Wiki is a collection of Internet pages which make up a very simple but also very powerful database. Wiki's are designed to allow collaboration and ease of change. Therefore they are used by companies to provide knowledge bases and as project management tools. Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, is probably the best-known example. |
Web Standards | Just like in the offline world, many different standards influence the Internet and web. When a website or page is said to adhere to web standards, it usually means that it has valid or nearly valid HTML and CSS , as defined by the W3C. Standards are also associated with usability and accessibility . |