website design terms
We don't talk in these terms to you unless you want us to and if one slips out accidentally then here is some you may want to know about
301 Redirect The most efficient, Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. If you decide to rename / reorganise your site you can preserve your search engine ranking and ensure visitors get to the correct page by the use of a .htaccess file (301 redirection info) on your server The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".
404 Not Found Code HTTP status code produced by the web server when a web page you are trying to access does not exist, websites can create a 404 Redirect page to ensure visitors get a friendly message instead of a '404 error message'. The 404 redirect instruction is stored in the .htaccess file on the server, a complete list of codes available here W3C Protocol Codes
AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, which is a term describing a web development technique for creating interactive web applications
Animation - It is referred to an image that changes over time. On this site we have two types, animated gifs (small moving fun images) and flash animation
ASP - Microsoft technology similar to CGI that is used to create dynamic content for a web page. 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.
Accessibility − Refers to a web page or web site that people interacting with different kinds of disabilities, the difficulty they can experience due to physical and or technological barriers. A web page or site that address these users limitations is said to be Accessibly friendly.
Applet − An applet is a small program designed to run within another application. Java is one of the major languages used for creating Web-based applets.
Bandwidth − Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Internet, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps). A hosting server will allocate your site a fixed amount of bandwidth usage within a regular period of time.
Banner - or banner ad, typically rectangular advertisement placed on a Web site either above, below or on the sides of the Web site's main content and is linked to the advertiser's own Web site.
Browser - Very often called Web browser, it is simply a software application used to interpret HTML / XHTML commands and display page content. The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, other browsers Safari and Opera
Content − A word you'll likely see around a lot is "web content" and by definition, content is the 'stuff' that makes up a web site. Very important to web users looking for information and search engines trying to tell what you are offering, This could be words, pictures, images or sounds. In essence however, when we talk about web content, we are essentially referring to content in a textual nature. Content therefore is the 'information' in text form a web site provides.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets A simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. Not all browsers (of specific versions) implement the full specification of CSS.
Database - A structured organisation of data
Design Brief - The document produced by a client when they put their website design project out to tender, project brief example
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 - A unique name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name delicious-webdesign.com represents one IP address. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. Every web site that you visit is stored under domain name.
Domain Name Extension - Part after the dot in the domain name is a domain name extension. In the delicious-webdesign.com domain, domain extension is .com There are many other domain name extensions such as .co.uk .com .tv . edu .gov .net .info many others.
Downloading - The method by which users access and save or "pull down" software or other files to their own computers from a remote computer on the Internet.
Directory − A database edited manually by Humans. Sites are indexed by category making this feature the main difference to a Search Engine. Users can navigate through the categories to locate documents or information. Most directories offer searching options (which is similar to searching from a Search Engine) within its database.
Dynamic Web site - A web site controlled by a database, content is 'dynamically' created (not a static site) normally when you click on a link or submit a form
E-Commerce - ECommerce means conducting business on the Internet. It is mostly referred to buying and selling over the internet or online. You can break e-commerce down further by it being in either one of two categories B2B OR B2C, Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C), the later has been refered to as E-business or E-tailing. In the website design world when someone requires an ecommerce website that means that they need to sell their items, products or services online, find out more about our ecommerce websites
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).
Favicon − A small icon or favourites icon associated with a particular webpage, see our delicious webdesign lips on the tab above and possibly to the left of the URL above
Frames − An HTML technique for combining two or more separate HTML documents within a single web browser screen. A web site using frames often causes great problems for search engines, and may not be spidered and indexed correctly.
Flash - Browser independent vector and graphic animation technology owned by Adobe (previously Macromedia) Most browsers support Flash technology and one flash animation looks the same on all browsers.
FTP - (File Transfer Protocol) is a method of transferring files (web pages for example) from your local PC to your web server. There are a variety of free ftp software programs available on the Internet and they enable you to update your website pages at any given time. When a hosting package is purchased 'ftp details', consisting of the host name, User ID and password are sent to us. Upon completion of the website and receipt of payment for any work carried out, we then send these details to the client.
GIF - Graphics interchange format, it is a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web. GIF supports colour and various resolutions. But it is limited to 256 colors.
Hits − Are the individual requests a server answers in order to render a single Web page completely. The page document itself and the various images on the page represent a separate hit.
Home Page − It is a first page (also referred as an opening page, start page or main page) of a Web site. This would technically be your index page or default page of your directory.
Hosting - 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.
HTML - HyperText Markup Language is a basic markup language derived from the Standardized General Markup Language (SGML), providing the means for creating simple hypertext documents, intended for publishing on the World Wide Web.
Intranet - A private network belonging to an organization, usually a corporation, accessible only by the organization's members, employees, or others with authorization.
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
Image Map − An image that has several links geographically mapped onto it.
Interactive − A Web page is interactive when it prompts a response from the user or in some way can interact with the user dynamically (eg; filling out a form or a poll etc).
Internet − A global network connecting millions of computers. Each Internet computer, called a host, is independent. The Internet is not synonymous with World Wide Web. The Internet and the Web are two related but separate things.
IP - Internet Protocol The method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet.
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 - JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that allows dynamic behaviour to be specified within HTML documents. Most browsers support java however some browsers are disabled for JavaScript use.
JPEG (JPG) - Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG uses compression technique for colour images and therefore some details are lost in the compression yet giving relatively good quality. It is widely used on the Internet and other digital applications.
Link or Hyperlink − An element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document. Typically, you click on the hyperlink to follow the link. Hyperlinks are the most essential ingredient of all hypertext systems, including the World Wide Web.
Meta Tag − A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed.
Mouseover − A JavaScript element that triggers a change on an item (typically a graphic change, such as making an image or hyperlink appear) in a Web page when the mouse pointer passes over it.
MP3 - is the file extension for MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes (layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3) for the compression of audio signals. MP3 files could be embedded into web site providing music while visitors are viewing the site. MP3 files are relatively small comparing to other audio files and therefore are quite suitable for transferring over the Internet.
MySQL - has become the de-facto standard for high-traffic web sites because of its high performance, stability and ease of use. This is true for internal Enterprise systems designed for sharing mission critical information in large organizations and even more so for Web 2.0 companies basing their entire revenue stream on continuous online availability. Often accessed with PHP scripting
Organic Search - Most search systems / engines offer two types of search results to their customers: paid results and organic or natural results. While paid results can get your Web site to rank higher for a specific keyword phrase (because you've paid to be high in the results), most customers consider these results to be little better than advertising, and will often skip over them in favour of the natural or organic search results.
PHP - PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Designed for Windows and Unix platforms. Commonly used with the My Sql Database
Perl [Practical Extraction and Report Language] − Perl is a server−side, interpreted language that provides much of the web's interactivity.
Pixel − Refers to how monitors divide the display screen into thousands or millions of individual dots to display an image. A pixel is one dot.
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.
Ranking − The number (order of ranking; ie 1 being the highest) that a web site is listed for a specific search term in a specific search engine. Search Engines utilize a ranking algorithm (mathematical formulas, variables, and set of weights) to determine a site's ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. We are SEO specialists and have ranked many of our clients high on Google using pure Organic Search / White Hat techniques
Resolution − The resolution of an image describes how fine the dots are that make up that image. The more dots, the higher the resolution. When displayed on a monitor, the dots are called pixels. A 640 x 480 screen (resolution) is capable of displaying 640 distinct dots on each of its 480 lines, or about 300,000 pixels.
Search Engine or Search System - You know the big ones Google, Yahoo, MSN. They are programs that performs searching on documents for specified terms or phrases and returns a list of the documents where those terms were found. Search Engines are lately referred to Internet Search Engines. Most popular search engines today are Google, Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, Excite, Lycos, AOL, HotBot, Altavista. There are over several thousands search engines and growing every day.
Search Engine Optimisation - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an act of of increasing the 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 optimised and search engine friendly.
Spam - Spam refers to the practice of blindly sending commercial messages or advertisements to email users or posting to newsgroups. You will be glad to know we encrypt your email address your site both within the form and the XHTML (we have encrypted our email address on this page)
Submission Forms - Forms are web pages "fields" for a user to fill in with information. They are an excellent way of collecting and processing information from people visiting a website, as well as allowing them to interact with web pages. Forms are written in HTML and processed by CGI programs. The output can be sent as an e-mail form, stored online, printed, and/or returned to the user as an HTML page.
Script − A script is an executable list of commands created by a scripting language. Scripts that are executed on a web server (eg; Perl, PHP) are said to be server−side scripts. Scripts that execute on your own home PC (eg; JavaScript) are said to be client−side scripts. Scripts can be embed within HTML to produce a web page with dynamic actions.
Scripting Language − A scripting language is a simple programming language used to write an executable list of commands, called a script. JavaScript, Perl, VBscript are scripting languages rather than general-purpose programming languages.
Server − A computer, program or process which responds to requests for information from an user. On the internet, all web pages, including the one you are reading, reside on servers (computers).
Spider / Bots − An automated software robot that continuously crawls hyperlinks and pages on the Internet and collects data that is returned to its database for indexing. This is how Search Engines function. The process of crawling the web, storing URLs' and indexing keywords, links and text, is the act of Spidering.
SSI [Server−Side Includes] − Tells a server to include information (source from a separate file) in a document before sending it to the browser. A very effective method of producing the same information over many pages as one file can be altered to produce the changes over the many the pages that includes the SSI file.
Sub−Domain (Name) − A sub−domain is a domain that is part of a larger domain name. DNS hierarchy consists of the root-level domain at the top, underneath which are the top−level domains, followed by second−level domains and finally sub−domains.
Tag − An HTML tag is a formatting command written into a document that specifies how it should be formatted. A web browser interprets these tags and outputs the intended command (action).
Template − XHTML templates are skeletal XHTML pages with the main content left out. Templates provide an effective solution in creating many pages with an identical look or navigational structure but different content.
Thumbnail - A small version of a bigger image on a web page. Usually containing a hyperlink to a full-size version of the image.
Traffic − Similar to a real−world sense of traffic on a road or freeway, traffic in a web−sense is a measurement of the amount of users that visit a Web site.
URL - Uniform Resource Identifier − The generic term for all types of names and addresses that refer to objects on the World Wide Web. A URL is one kind of URI.
Usability − We like to think we are good at this, generally this refers to the degree or level of a websites operating friendliness for the user. We test our sites by using a range of people and ability to ensure the average user will be able to navigate their way around your new web-site.
Video Clip - A short video sequence that can be embedded into a web page.
Validation − Validation is a way to make sure that your (HTML) code is compliant with current HTML specifications.
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium. Established in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.
Web Application - 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 Based E-mail - Software on a POP3 server that allows you the luxury, if desired, to access your POP accounts by simply using a web-browser. It allows users to send and receive emails via any web-browser by viewing an HTML web page.
Web design - is a process of conceptualisation, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Common misspelling web disign or web site disign
Web Page - One of the pages one the web site including home page.
Web Site or Website -A site presence on the World Wide Web. Each Web site contains a home page (opening page), which is the first document users see when they enter the site.
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.
XHTML - Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language.
