Website Design Terms

AJAX
AJAX, stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, which is a term describing a web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of: HTML (or XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets for presenting information Document Object Model, JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented XML, XSLT and the XMLHttpRequest object to interchange and manipulate data asynchronously with the web server.

Animation
It is referred to an image that changes over time. A simple example is Abacus logo where the red dot is moving up and down every several seconds.

ASP
Short for Active Server Pages that is used for creating dynamic content of a web page. Technically said it is a server side scripting language. It is mostly used on Windows platforms.

Back End
The server process that happens behind the scenes of a website. The backend is the process that serves the information to the end user and interacts with a shopping cart, for example.

Bandwidth: The amount of data or information that can be transmitted through your Internet connection.

Banner ad
An advertisement on a Web page that links to an advertiser’s site. Ad banners are the most common unit of advertising on the Web and cost anywhere from free to upwards of $15,000 per month depending on the amount of page requests the Web site receives. The standard size for an ad banner set by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high.

Branding
A marketing concept used to create a greater awareness of your company's products and services. Companies that are interested in branding try to get as many Web users as possible to view their banner ads and logos, with less concern for the number of clickthroughs to their Web sites.

browser: A software application used to display Web pages. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla are examples.

Bulletin Board
An online forum for a threaded conversation. Users can browse through previously posted messages or add their own message.

Campaign
Refers to the schedule by which a banner ad will run or fly.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
A CGI script is a small program that results in an action based on the user's input.

Chat
Allows Web surfers to "speak" to one another on a real-time basis. Generally, messages typed in can be viewed immediately.

Clickthrough Rate
The percentage of Web visitors who actually click on a banner ad to get to a Web site. Clickthrough rates vary from as low as 0.1 percent to 1 percent for Run of Network campaigns, to as high as 3 percent to 5 percent for more targeted campaigns.

Co-Located Server
When your site is hosted on a co-located server, an Internet service provider (ISP) provides high speed Internet access for a Web server that you provide and set up. Generally, the ISP is responsible for making sure the connection is up, while you are responsible for making sure the site works.

Cookie
Web sites use browser-assigned cookies to collect user information and to deliver customized content.

Cost Per Click
Cost per clickthrough to your site.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
Ads are charged at their rate of impressions, or amount of times the ad is viewed by Web visitors, usually in groups of 1,000.

Database
A special way of organizing computer data. It looks like a table implemented columns and rows for fast accessing data from any of the cells in the table. There are many different types of databases but all of them work on the same principle. Databases are very useful for storing and organizing data for later retrieval. Very often used for managing accounts, managing user information, creating guest books and bulletin boards, even this page (dictionary) is implemented with database.

Dedicated Line
A type of telecommunications service in which a high-speed open connection is maintained between two points.

Dedicated Server
When your site is hosted on a dedicated server, the Internet service provider (ISP) provides a NT or UNIX server and connects it to a high-speed Internet network. All you have to do is develop content for your site and install the necessary applications on the server.

Directory: A term describing the hierarchical structure used to organize files or folders. The first directory in any file is labeled root directory. You may be familiar with the Windows back slash (/) which is the symbol for root directory.

Discussion Group
A web page that supports interactive discussions by users. Users submit text content using a form, that is saved on the server and that way make it available to other visitors.

DNS
The Domain Name System which identifies each computer as a network point on the Internet using an internet protocol address systems to translate from domain name to IP and reverse.

Domain Name: Domain names identify Web pages. In this example of a web address, eyelandcreations.com is the domain name: http://www.platgroupng.com/index.php
Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain (TLD) it belongs within, such as:

• .gov - Government agencies
• .mil - Military
• .edu - Educational Institutions
• .com - Commercial Business

A web address, also called a URL, is actually a sequence of numbers called IP Addresses. Your web server translates these numbers into your domain using a Domain Name System (DNS) server.

Downloading
Downloading is the method by which users access and save or "pull down" software or other files to their own computers from a remote computer, usually via a modem.

Dynamic Pages
Web pages that are automatically generated based on user input and activity.

E-Commerce
E-Commerce means conducting business on the Internet. It is mostly referred to buying and selling items on line.

Email Client: The software your computer uses to access your e-mail, for instance, Microsoft Outlook.

Encryption
A way of coding the information in a file or e-mail message so that if it is intercepted by a third party as it travels over a network it cannot be read. Only the persons sending and receiving the information have the key and this makes it unreadable to anyone except those persons (your browser does it automatically).

File Transfer Protocol (FTP): File Transfer Protocol, most commonly used to download or upload files to a server.

Firewall
A way to ensure that data on a Web server or connected computer will not be available to anyone on the Internet. Firewalls block outsiders from accessing private information or altering your Web site.

Flash
Browser independent vector and graphic animation technology owned by Macromedia Inc.. Most browsers support Flash technology and one flash animation looks the same on all browsers.

Front End
The part of a website that the end user interacts with. You are interacting with the frontend of Adrial Designs right now. A site's backend is the part behind the scenes that takes care of interactions with a database or shopping cart.

GIF: Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmapped graphics file format used on the Web. The color space is limited to 256 colors and therefore GIF format is best used by solid colored graphics and some illustrations but is not recommended for photographs.

Home Page
It is a first page (also called opening page) of a Web site.

Host Server or Web Site Hosting: A computer that stores the files that make up your web site.

Hosting
Hosting is a service provided by hosting company. That's a place (a computer available on the Internet) where web site is stored and made available to web site users to view the content of that web site.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML): HyperText Markup Language, used to create documents on the World Wide Web. It defines the structure and layout of the document using tags and attributes.

HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
The protocol used to access pages across the Web.

Impression
Another term for page view. The number of Web users that view a particular page.

Internet
A worldwide network of interconnected computers. The Internet uses the TCP/IP protocol to send information between disparate systems.

Internet Service Provider (ISP)
ISPs offer businesses and consumers connections to the Internet. Some offer Web hosting and site development services as well.

IP Address: A 32-bit numeric address used by a computer or device to route messages. For example, a web server uses the IP Address 17.254.3.183 to find the domain name apple.com. A TCP/IP network also uses IP Addresses to identify computers and other devices on a network.

ISDN
A digital dial-up service that can be used for a high-speed Internet connection.

Inventory
The number of banner ad impressions that are available during any period of time.

IP Address
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifier for a point or host connection on an IP network. An IP address is a 32 bit binary number usually represented as 4 decimal values, each representing 8 bits, in the range 0 to 255 (known as octets) separated by decimal points. It is just a number like 66.46.105.9

Java: A high level, object-oriented language originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Small Java applications are called Java applets and can be downloaded from a Web server and run on your computer by a Java-compatible Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Java applet
A short program written in Java (not JavaScript) that is attached to a World Wide Web page and executed by the browser machine. Often used for complicated web applications.

JavaScript: An open source scripting language originally developed by Netscape that interacts with HTML allowing for a variety of dynamic web page designs.

JPEG (JPG): Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG is a lossy compression format used by images on the Web. JPEG format is generally used for photographs.

Link Exchange Banner Network
To advertise your site on one or more of link exchange special ad servers. An ad server  manages and maintains ad banners for a Web site. Programs used are extremely sophisticated and are capable of keeping track and reporting Web site usage statistics. Ad banners can then be targeted towards certain types of individuals. It also provides the ability to rotate banners so a user won’t see the same banner every time they come back to the same page. 
Most popular banner network is named MSN Link Exchange (LE): Reaches more than 65% of all visitors to the web, and over 40 million viewers, over 450,000 sites in 32 languages are indexed.

Meta tag
An optional HTML tag (HTML code element) that is used to specify information about a Web document. Some search engines such as AltaVista use "spiders" to index Web pages. These spiders read the information contained within a page's META tag. So in theory, an HTML or Web page author has the ability to control how there site is indexed by search engines and how and when it will "come up" on a user's search.
The META tag can also be used to specify an HTTP or URL address for the page to "jump" to after a certain amount of time. This is known as Client-Pull. What this means, is a Web page author can control the amount of time a Web page is up on the screen as well as where the browser will go next. 
Here's a look at the syntax for search engine indexing: <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Page title</TITLE><META NAME="keywords" content="keyword listing"><meta name="description" content="description given"></HEAD></HTML> .

Modem: Short for modulator-demodulator, a modem is a device used by a computer to transmit and carry data over a phone or cable line.

Multimedia: The ability of a computer to display text, graphics, video, animation and sound in an integrated manner.

PDF: The Portable Document Format was developed by Adobe. These files make it possible to capture the formatting information from any desktop publishing or word processing program and send the file to another computer or printer with all formatting intact – even if the recipient does not have the program or fonts the creator used. To view a file in PDF format, you do need the free Adobe Reader software.

Perl
A computer programming language. This language is favored by programmers for tasks involving system utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access, graphical programming, networking, and Web programming.

PHP
PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Designed for Windows and Unix type platforms.

Point of Presence (POP)
A physical location maintained by an Internet service provider to provide a local connection to the Internet.

Portal
Another term for search engine. A portal is basically an Internet hub that acts as a starting point for locating information on the Web. Some examples of portals are Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, and InfoSeek.

Protocol
A formal set of conventions that allow communication between two communicating functional units. Simply said it is a language that computers use to talk to each other. Of course there are many such languages. Most popular is TCP/IP used officially on the Internet.

Secure Pages
Pages that are encrypted to ensure privacy. These are typically used for forms where sensitive information, like a credit card number, is being relayed.

Search Engine
A program which acts like a library card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to help a user isolate desired information or resources by searching for keywords that the user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining an index of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords or concepts entered by the user. The index can be built from specific resource lists or created by Web wanderers, robots, spiders, crawlers, and worms. From the Net surfer point of view search engines can be quite tiresome and not very fruitful if you don't know how to use them correctly. Different engines are good for different kinds of searches. It's a good idea before using a search engine to read the help section of the engine's Web site to see what the best way is to optimize your results.
Among top sized engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, Excite, Lycos, AOL, HotBot, AltaVista.

Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an act of increasing the number of visitors to a particular Web site by adding appropriate keywords and phrases, and such ranking high in the search results. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that your site will be found by a search user. For general and competitive web sites it takes a lot of professionalism to tweak the web site in order to be well optimized and search engine friendly.

Shared Hard Drive
A type of Web site hosting service that allots you a certain amount of hard drive space for your Web site. Generally, you are given a folder into which you can upload your Web pages and images.

Spam
Spam refers to the practice of blindly sending commercial messages or advertisements to email users or posting to newsgroups.

Static Pages
Web pages that consist only of HTML and images.

T1, T2, T3 Lines
These dedicated lines are typically used by companies with substantial connection requirements. Dedicated lines carry enormous amounts of data per second, with T1 having the smallest capacity and T3 the largest. They can be used to connect a user to an Internet service provider (typically T1), or to connect an Internet service provider to other locations on the Internet (T2 and T3).

transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
These two protocols allow computers to talk to each other over long distance networks. IP is responsible for moving packets of data between nodes. TCP is responsible for verifying delivery from client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the Internet and is built into every common modern operating system (including all flavors of Unix, the Mac OS, and the latest versions of Windows).

Telnet
A powerful program that allows users to access other computers from remote locations. Users are then able to run commands and programs as if they were sitting at that remote computer.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator, also known as a web address.

Virtual Domain Name
A service offered by Web site hosting companies that allows you to utilize a domain name as your Web site address. Companies that do not offer this will require that the hosting company's domain name be part of your Web site address.

Web Application
Web Applications are web programs or real programs designed to be used on the web site using a browser. Example of web application would be e-commerce web site, web banking, stock exchange on the web, web games and many others. Web applications are becoming very popular due to wide availability of the Internet access.

Web Server: A computer which delivers Web pages.

Web Site: A collection of documents and files displayed on the Web.

World Wide Web: A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.

WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get.

Virtual Assistant: A temporary worker hired as needed who performs tasks remotely.

XHTML: Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language.