Glossary of web
A
ASP
Active Server Pages (ASP) is
Microsoft's server-side technology for dynamically-generated web pages that is
marketed as an adjunct to Internet Information Server (IIS).
Authoring Tool
An authoring tool is a
software application used to create multimedia content typically for delivery
on the World Wide Web.
B
B2B
Business-to-business
electronic commerce (B2B) typically takes the form of automated processes
between trading partners and is performed in much higher volumes than business-to-consumer
(B2C) applications.
B2C
Business-to-consumer
electronic commerce (B2C) is typified by the publicly addressed forms of eCommerce such as webshops and TeleShopping.
Backlink
Backlinks are incoming links
to a website. For example, a site with a lot of backlinks
implies that many other sites link to that site.
Bandwidth
The word bandwidth is also
used to mean the amount of data that can be transferred through a digital
connection in a given time period (i.e., the connection's bit rate). In such
cases, bandwidth is usually measured in bits or bytes per second.
Blog
A weblog, Web log or simply a blog, is a web application which contains periodic posts on
a common webpage. These posts are often but not necessarily in reverse
chronological order. Such a website would typically be accessible to any
Internet user. The term "blog" came into common use as a way of
avoiding confusion with the term server log.
Bridge Page
Bridge Page are web pages that
are created to rank high in search engines for particular phrases with purpose
to seduce or hoax you to watch another page. They are also known as bridge
pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry
pages and by other names.
C
CGI
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
is an important World Wide Web technology that enables a client web browser to
request data from a program executed on the Web server. CGI specifies a
standard for passing data between the client and the program.
Client
In computing, a client is a
system that accesses a (remote) service on another computer by some kind of
network. The term was first applied to devices that were not capable of running
their own stand-alone programs, but could interact with remote computers via a
network. These dumb terminals were clients of the time-sharing mainframe
computer.
ColdFusion
In computing, ColdFusion is a
tag-based, middleware programming language used chiefly for writing web-based
applications. The language was created by JJ Allaire
and his brother Jeremy Allaire, but the product is
currently owned by Macromedia.
Counter
Counters are (usually)
numerical counters displayed on some Internet web pages. Once set up, these
counters will be incremented one every time the web page is retrieved (viewed
on a web browser).
CPA
Cost Per Action (CPA) for
banner ads; the fee charged every time a user completes a desired action, such
as filling out a form, downloading software, or viewing a series of pages.
CPC
Cost Per
Click (CPC) for banner ads; the fee charged every time a user clicks on a
banner ad or HTML link.
CPL
Cost Per Lead
(CPL). A lead can be anything from an e-mail address for a newsletter to a
complete survey that needs to be completely filled out and verified in order to
get credit.
CPM
Cost Per 1000
Impressions (CPM), of buying advertising space in a given media vehicle. For example, $100
CPM means each impression cost 10 cents. "1" CPM mens "1000" Impressions.
CPS
Cost Per
Sale (CPS); the fee charged every time a user completes a purchase.
Crawler
A web crawler (also known as
web spider) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical,
automated manner. A web crawler is one type of bot. Web crawlers not only keep
a copy of all the visited pages for later processing - for example by a search
engine but also index these pages to make the search narrower.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
is a computer language used to describe the presentation of a structured
document written in HTML, XHTML or XML. The CSS specification is maintained by
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
CTR
Click Through
Ratio (CTR); the ratio of click-throughs to
impressions for a given ad run. For example, if a banner has a CTR of 40:1, it
means that 1 out of 40 people have clicked on it.
D
Dead Link
A dead link is a link on the world wide web that points to a webpage or server that is
permanently unavailable. Dead links are commonplace on the Internet, but they
are considered to be unprofessional.
DHTML
Dynamic HTML or DHTML
designates a technique of creating interactive web sites by using a combination
of the static markup language HTML, a client-side
scripting language (such as JavaScript) and the style definition language
Cascading Style Sheets.
Directory
In computing, a directory, catalog, or folder, is an entity in a file system which
contains a group of files and other directories. A typical file system contains
thousands of files, and directories help organize them by keeping related files
together. A directory contained inside another directory is called a subdirectory
of that directory. Together, the directories form a hierarchy, or tree
structure.
DNS
The Domain Name Server
(System) or DNS is a system that stores information about host names and domain
names in a kind of distributed database on networks, such as the Internet. Most
importantly, it provides an IP address for each host name, and lists the mail
exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain.
Domain Name
A domain name is the unique
name of a computer on the Internet that distinguishes it from the other systems
on the network.
Doorway Page
Doorway pages are web pages
that are created to rank high in search engines for particular phrases with
purpose to seduce or hoax you to watch another page. They are also known as
bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names.
Download
The process of retrieving
information from any computer to your computer is called downloading.
Dynamic Page
Information on web pages which
changes or is changed automatically. Sometimes it's possible to spot this
technique by looking at a page's file extension.
Search engines will currently
index dynamic content in a similar fashion to static content.
E
EPC
EPC means; Earnings Per Click.
EPV
EPV means; Earnings Per Visitor.
Error 400
Error 400: Bad Request means;
the request is incorrect.
Error 401
Error 401: Unauthorized means;
the client does not have the required privileges to access the site.
Error 403
Error 403: Forbidden means;
the request is forbidden. You don't have an access to enter the site.
Error 404
Error 404: Not Found means;
the requested resource no longer exists or has been moved, or the address may
be misspelled.
Error 500
Error 500: Internal Server
Error means; the server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it
from fulfilling the request by the client for access to the requested URL.
Error 501
Error 501: Not Implemented
means; the server does not support the service type or the called protocol.
Error 503
Error 503: Service Unavailable
means; the server took too long to answer and the connection timed out.
F
Favicon
A favicon
(short for "Favorites icon"), also known as
a page icon, is an icon associated with a particular website. A web designer
can create such an icon, and many graphical web browsers—such
as recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, and Konqueror—can then make use of them. Browsers that
support favicons may display them in the browser's
address bar, next to the site's name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the
page's title in a Tabbed Document Interface.
FFA
A Free For
All link page (FFA) is a web page set up to ostensibly improving the search
engine placement of a particular web site.
Frames
Frames is the HTML extension
that Netscape developed to divide a page up into several sub-pages.
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol
(FTP) is a software standard for transferring computer files between machines
with widely different operating systems. It belongs to the application layer of
the Internet protocol suite.
G
Gateway Page
Gateway Page are web pages
that are created to rank high in search engines for particular phrases with
purpose to seduce or hoax you to watch another page. They are also known as
bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names.
H
Hit
Hit is a request for a file on
a webserver. Each HTML document and graphic file
counts as a separate hit, so they aren't an accurate representation of the
number of different visitors to your site.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup
language designed for the creation of web pages and other information viewable
in a browser.
HTTP
HTTP (HyperText
Transfer Protocol) is the primary method used to convey information on the
World Wide Web. The original purpose was to provide a way to publish and
receive HTML pages.
HTTPS
HTTPS is the secure version of
HTTP, the communication protocol of the World Wide Web. It was invented by
Netscape Communications Corporation to provide authentication and encrypted
communication and is used in electronic commerce.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink, or simply a link,
is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource.
As such it would be similar to a citation in literature. However, combined with
a data network and suitable access protocol, it can be used to fetch the
resource referenced. This can then be saved, viewed, or displayed as part of
the referencing document.
Hypertext
Hypertext is a user interface
paradigm for displaying documents which contain automated cross-references to
other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a hyperlink causes the computer to
display the linked document within a very short period of time.
I
Image Map
In HTML, a list of
co-ordinates relating to a specific image, created in order to hyperlink areas
of the image to various destinations. For example, a map of the world may have
each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. The
intention of an image map is to provide an easy way of linking various parts of
an image without resorting to dividing the image into separate parts.
IP Address
An IP address is a unique
number, akin to a telephone number, used by machines (usually computers) to
refer to each other when sending information through the Internet using the
Internet Protocol. This allows machines passing the information onwards on
behalf of the sender to know where to send it next, and for the machine
receiving the information to know that it is the intended destination.
ISP
An Internet Service Provider
(ISP) is a business or organization that offers users
access to the Internet and related services. Most telecommunications operators
are ISPs. They provide services like internet transit, domain name registration
and hosting, dial-up access, leased line access and colocation.
J
Java
Java is an object-oriented
programming language developed primarily by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun
Microsystems. The language, initially called Oak (named after the oak trees
outside Gosling's office), was intended to replace C++, although the feature
set better resembles that of Objective C.
JavaScript
JavaScript, often mistyped as
"Javascript", is an object-oriented
scripting language based on the concept of prototypes. The language is most
well known for its use in websites. It was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape Communications under the name Mocha and
then LiveScript but then renamed to
"JavaScript". JavaScript has a syntax close to that of Sun Microsystems’ Java language. But beside name and syntax
the language has more in common with Self than with
Java. JavaScript was first standardized in 1997–1999 by ECMA under the name ECMAScript. The standard (as of December 1999) is ECMA-262 Edition
3, and corresponds to JavaScript 1.5. This is also now an ISO 16262 standard.
K
Keyword
A word searched for in a
search command. Keywords are searched in any order. Use spaces to separate
keywords in simple keyword searching.
Keyword Density
A property of the
text in a web page which indicates how close together the keywords appear. Some search
engines use this property for Positioning. Analysers are available which allow
comparisons between pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword
densities to those found in high ranking pages.
Keyword Phrase
More than one Keyword,
searched exactly as keyed (all terms required to be in documents, in the order
keyed). Enclosing keywords in quotations " " forms a phrase in Search
Engines. Some times a phrase is called a "character string."
L
Link Farm
Link farm is a large group of web pages created that contain hyperlinks to one
another or a specific other page. Link farms are normally created by programs,
rather than by human beings.
Link Popularity
Link popularity is a measure
of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on
the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards
off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory,
off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality
to search engine rankings.
M
Meta
Tag
Mirror Site
Mirror site is an exact copy
of another Internet site (often a web site). Mirror sites are most commonly
used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular
value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads.
O
Open
Source
Open source or open-source
software (
P
PageRank
PageRank is a family of
algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web
pages) indexed by a search engine. Its properties are much discussed by search
engine optimization (SEO) experts. The PageRank
system is used by the popular search engine Google to help determine a page's
relevance or importance. It was developed by Google's founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin while at
Perl
Perl, also Practical
Extraction and Report Language, is a programming language released by Larry
Wall on December 18, 1987 that borrows features from C, sed,
awk, shell scripting and from many other programming
languages.
PHP
PHP is a widely-used
open-source programming language primarily for server-side applications and
developing dynamic web content.
POP3
Post Office Protocol version 3
(POP3) is an application layer Internet standard protocol used to retrieve
email from a remote server to a local client over a TCP/IP connection. Nearly
all individual Internet service provider email accounts are accessed via POP3.
Popunder
Pop-under ads are a form of
online advertising that, spawns a new browser window
in the background.
Popup
Pop-up ads are a form of
online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to increase web traffic. It
works when certain web sites open a new web browser window to display
advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually
generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well. A less
intrusive variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This
opens a new browser window, but in the background, so as not to interrupt the
user's page-view.
Portal
A portal is a web site that
provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the
Internet or an intranet. Intranet portals are also known as "enterprise
information portals" (EIP).
PPC
Pay per click, or PPC, is an
advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. Pay per
click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a
site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small
amount. Variants include pay for placement and pay for ranking. Pay per click
is also sometimes known as Cost per click or CPC.
PPL
Pay per lead, or PPL, is an ad
pricing structure by which the advertiser pays the publisher according to how
many leads are generated by an ad, often determined by information submitted
directly into the banner ad.
PSA
A public service announcement
or PSA is a non-commercial "advertisement" for web sites.
R
Reciprocal
Link
A reciprocal link is a mutual
link between two objects, commonly between two websites in order to ensure
mutual traffic.
Referrer
When visiting a webpage, the referer (sic) or referring page is the URL of the previous
webpage from which a link was followed. More generally, it is the URL of a
previous item which led to this request - the referer
for an image, for example, is generally the HTML page on which it is to be
displayed. The referer is part of the HTTP request
sent by the browser program to the web server.
Robots.txt
The robots exclusion standard
or robots.txt protocol is a convention to prevent well-behaved web spiders and
other web robots from accessing all or part of a website. The information
specifying the parts that should not be accessed is specified in a file called
robots.txt in the top-level directory of the website.
Search Engine
A search engine is a program
designed to help find files stored on a computer, for example a public server
on the World Wide Web, or one's own computer. The search engine allows one to
ask for media content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a
given word or phrase) and retrieving a list of files that match those criteria.
A search engine often uses a previously made, and regularly updated index to
look for files after the user has entered search criteria.
S
SEO
Search engine optimization
(SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website
in search engine listings. The term also refers to an industry of consultants
that carry out optimization projects on behalf of client sites.
SERP
SERP was chosen as the keyword
for the initial competition, primarily due to the fact it is an acronym for
Search Engine Results Page. Not a well known word, except by SEOs, this meant it was not a particularly competitive
target, allowing for the tracking of competing sites to be reasonably easy.
Server
Server is a computer software
application that carries out some task on behalf of users. This is usually divided
into file serving, allowing users to store and access files on a common
computer; and application serving, where the software runs a computer program
to carry out some task for the users. This is the original meaning of the term.
Web, mail, and database servers are what most people access when using the
internet.
Session ID
Session ID (Session
Identifier) is a value generated by a server that identifies a particular
session.
SHTML
A file name extension that
identifies web pages containing SSI commands.
SMTP
SMTP is a relatively simple,
text-based protocol, where one or more recipients of a message are specified
(and in most cases verified to exist) and then the message text is transferred.
It is quite easy to test a SMTP server using the telnet program. SMTP uses TCP
port 25. To determine the SMTP server for a given domain name, the MX (Mail eXchange) DNS record is used.
Spam
Spamming is the use of any
electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages in bulk. In the
popular eye, the most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form
of commercial advertising. However, over the short history of electronic media,
people have done things comparable to spamming for many purposes other than the
commercial, and in many media other than e-mail. In this article and those
related, the term spamming is used broadly to refer to
all of these behaviors, regardless of medium and
commercial intent.
Spider
A spider is a program which
browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. A web crawler is
one type of bot. Web crawlers not only keep a copy of all the visited pages for
later processing - for example by a search engine but also index these pages to
make the search narrower.
SQL
Structured Query Language
(SQL) is the most popular computer language used to create, modify and query
databases.
SSI
Server Side Includes or SSI is
a simple server-side scripting language used almost exclusively for the web. As
its name implies, its primary use is including the contents of one file in
another.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),
its successor, are cryptographic protocols which
provide secure communications on the Internet.
Static Page
Static Page is a standard web
page using only HTML. Static pages do not employ dynamic technologies (like
PHP, ASP, Perl...), and have standard URL's.
Subdomain
In the DNS hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain name.
A 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 subdomains.
T
TLD
A top-level domain (TLD) is
the last part of which Internet domain names consist of. For example, in the
domain name MyWebmasterIndex.com the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain
names are not case-sensitive).
Toolbar
In a graphical interface on a
computer monitor a toolbar is a row, column, or block of onscreen buttons or
icons that, when clicked, activate certain functions of the program.
Traffic
Traffic is the amount of data
sent and received by visitors to a web site. This is determined by the number
of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and
outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if
there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by
people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and
the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems
or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome.
U
Unique Visitors
Unique visitor is a real
visitor to a web site. Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and
this is used to determine the number of real people who have visited a web
site. If for example, someone visits twenty pages within a web site, the server
will count only one unique visitor (because the page accesses are all
associated with the same IP address) but twenty page accesses.
Upload
When one computer sends
information to another, it is called uploading.
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator,
URL, or Web address, is a standardized address for
some resource (such as a document or image) on the Internet (or elsewhere).
First created by Tim Berners-Lee for use on the World Wide Web, the currently
used forms are detailed by IETF standard.
User Agent
A user agent is the client
application used with a particular network protocol; the phrase is most
commonly used in reference to those which access the World Wide Web. Web user
agents range from web browsers to search engine crawlers ("spiders"),
as well as screen readers and braille browsers used
by people with disabilities.
V
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing and viral
advertising refers to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing
social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through
processes similar to the spread of an epidemic.
Virtual Domain
Also seen as "redirecting
URLs," a virtual domain is one that exists in type, but not on an actual
server. Popular redirecting services (cjb.net, for example) will allow you to
sign up for a virtual domain name of your choice. This is useful if your actual
URL is long and not easily remembered. By typing in the redirecting URL of your
choice, you are automatically redirected by the service to your actual, longer
URL.
Virtual Hosting
Virtual hosting is a method
that web servers use to host more than one domain name on the same computer and
IP address.
W
Web Hosting
Web hosting is a service that
provides Internet users with online systems for storing information, images,
video, or any content accessible via the web. Web hosts are companies that
provide space on a server they own for use by their clients.
Web Server
A Web Server is a computer on
the World Wide Web (connected to the Internet Backbone) that stores HTML
documents that can be retrieved via a Web browser.
Whois
Whois is a protocol for
submitting a query to a database for determining the owner of a domain name, an
IP network, or an autonomous system number.
WML
Wireless Markup
Language is the primary content format for devices that implement the WAP
(Wireless Application Protocol) specification based on XML, such as mobile
phones.
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What
You See Is What You Get, and is used in computing to refer to the technology
that makes sure the image seen on the screen corresponds to what is printed out
on paper. Today this is expected for word processors but in other situations,
like web (HTML) authoring, this is not always the case.
X
XHTML
XHTML (short for Extensible
Hypertext Markup Language) is a markup
language that has the same expressive possibilities as HTML, but a stricter
syntax. Whereas HTML was an application of SGML, a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more
restrictive subset of SGML. XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Recommendation on January 26, 2000.
XLL
Extensible Linking Language
(XLL), second part of the W3C's XML specification concerning hyperlinks. An XML
extension used to insert links that can point directly to a specific object
(image, title, word, etc.) into a page.
XML
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C recommendation for creating
special-purpose markup languages. It is a simplified
subset of SGML, capable of describing many different kinds of data. Its primary
purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured text and information across
the Internet. Languages based on XML (for example, RDF, RSS, MathML, XSIL and SVG) are themselves described in a formal
way, allowing programs to modify and validate documents in these languages
without prior knowledge of their form.
XSL
The eXtensible
Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a set of language
technologies for defining XML document transformation and presentation