Glossary of Web design terms

Website design is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Clients need to know what various terms mean in order to have a better understanding of their options and, for that matter, just where the heck the website is and how to see it!

B2B
Business-to-business. An E-commerce model that involves one business purchasing goos from another business.

Bandwith
The amount of data that can be transfered in a fixed amount of time.

Banner
A graphic image, usually created as a page header (at the top or head of the page) for a website or as an ad when advertising your website on another.

Browser
The software on your computer that translates the coding and allows you to view a page - most people use Netscape, Internet Explorer or America Online browsers. Each has a different way of seeing pages.

Configuring your browser
When you configure your browser, you set all the controls that personalize it for you. It can be simple things like whether you like your links to be underlined and what color they should be after you've visited them. This is also where you save favorites and bookmarks.

Digital format
 In a form that can be sent over the Internet - via email - or on a CD or on a ZIP disk. This could be a scanned image, a Microsoft Word document or plain text email.

Domain name
A unique website name, registered with Internic, usually ending in .com, .net, .gov, .edu, org, etc. Also referred to as URL or website address

E-mail address
A unique address for sending and receiving email, i.e., yourname@yourdomain.com - automatically chosen when setting up an ISP account and when setting up a domain name - protected by account name and password when configuring your browser or email software

Homepage
The first page of your website.

HTML
Acronym for Hyper Text Mark-up Language. This is the code used to make your website pages appear the way you want them to - used by the designer and webmaster to create your pages.

hyperlink
A word or image which, when mouse-clicked, takes you to a page with more information - same as link image A logo, photograph, custom graphic, map, animated graphic. Too many and the page takes too long to download.

Internic
A database of registered domain names, regulated so that only the website administrator or website technical contact can make changes. These are the people who make sure there are no duplicate website domain names. There is about a $35 per year charge for you to keep your domain name, and you must renew it before it expires.

ISP
Acronym for Internet Service Provider. The account you set up so you can connect with the Internet.

Keywords
Any word or phrase that has particular significance to the content of your website. When someone uses a search engine to find information you have, your website should be suggested in response to the search query when your keywords are used.

Link
A word or image which, when clicked, takes you to a page with more information - same as hyperlink

Meta Tag
Text in the coding of the HTML structure of your page, which the user does not see - most commonly used are the "description" and "keyword" meta tags. The first is a maximum 25-word sentence, the second is a list of search terms or keywords. Search engines and directories use these meta tags as one method of indexing or finding websites.

Online
You are connected by dial-up, DSL or cable to the Internet. (Some companies may have more powerful connections.)

Page
Roughly an 8.5" x 10" printed page, including text and images.

Search engine
Like a huge index of all the websites on the Internet. It returns results when keywords are entered as search terms. There are thousands of search engines, some good and some not so good. I submit websites to the 20 most popular ones.

server
The computer holding files that are accessed by your (or anyone else's) computer when you are connected to the internet (online) and have typed in a valid URL.

URL
Short for Universal Resource Locator, same as website address or domain name.

Webmaster
The person in charge of your website maintenance.

Website address
Same as domain name or URL.

Website administrator
A person registered by you with the Internic as a contact able to make changes to your domain name information. This might be used if you change web hosts, for example, or if something about your domain name changes. The registered technical contact do this also.

Website hosting
A service provided by a company who owns the server where your website pages are stored.

Website maintenance
All the work done with the website once it has been placed (uploaded) to the server. Can include making changes to the images or content and submitting to search engines and directories by the webmaster (not all webmasters do the extra work of search submissions)

Website technical contact
A person registered by you with the Internic as a contact who can make changes to your domain name information.