web jargon explained
Accessibility
Ensuring websites are accessible for people with disabilities such as blindness, colour blindness, deafness. For example this can be achieved by making the site friendly to screen readers for the blind.
Alt Tags
Text descriptions embedded in pictures or graphics that appear when the mouse hovers over the item.
Backlink
Links to your website from other sites. These are usually seen as vital for improved Search Engine Optimisation (see entry for SEO)
Bookmark
Also known as favourites these are a way users can retain a note of commonly visited sites. Browsers can be asked to keep a list of site addresses (called ‘favourites’) to enable a user to quickly find them again. Little icons can be attached to favourites to make them easily identifiable – see Favicons.
Browser
Software that is designed to access and display web site information. Popular browsers include: Internet Explorer (Microsoft), Safari (Apple), Chrome (Google), Firefox (Mozilla), Opera (Opera Software), and many others. They differ in functionality and not all web sites look the same in all browsers!
CMS
Content Management Systems. Sometimes used to enable users to update parts of websites without affecting functionality or site design. Usually requires time to use, additional software and new skills to be learnt by the user.
Copyright
This area should be given careful consideration! When someone publishes anything (a picture, media such as music or video, an article or a book for example) they usually own the copyright. Simply put, this means you must either own the copyright or have that persons permission to republish or use the item. Breach of copyright is serious and can lead to legal action, that’s why we insist all our customers confirm that they have the right to use anything that they submit for their site.
Crawlers
A computer programme used by Search Engines to browse the internet and find web pages which are then downloaded, content analysed and indexed by the search engine company. This is so your site can be found in future. Sometimes called spiders, bots, or robots amongst other names. When designing a website it is important to optimise this indexing by crawlers, which is where hidden features such as ‘meta tags’ can be important, though only in part. See SEO
Domain Name
An internet address that identifies the business/organisation the website belongs to. Usually split into two visible levels separated with a full stop i.e Microsoft.com. In the UK the suffix is usually .co.uk for UK based businesses. We can help you chose the best available names to select from and then register the name on your behalf.
Electronic mail – a communication system for sending messages. Email systems can be programmes installed on your computer (e.g. Microsoft Mail), or can be server based such as Yahoo Mail or Gmail (Google). There are advantages and disadvantages to both of these types of mail systems so careful consideration should be given to the options that suit you best. Stonyweb can set up your website email to point to either or forward from your main address to your external email address.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions. This can be a list of questions commonly asked by website visitors and can be built up over time to help visitors get a better understanding of your products, services, organisation or topic. FAQ’s should be reviewed from time to time to see if any of the questions covered could be resolved by website improvements or updating information on the site.
Favicon
Very small icons that can be coded into your website so that when a user ‘saves’ the site as a ‘favourite’ in their browser as small picture is displayed alongside the site name in the favourites list.
FTP
This stands for File Transfer Protocol and is the method commonly used for transferring files on the internet – for example loading the code for your website onto the hosting server so that it can be seen on the internet.
GIF
A type of graphic file for photographs and other images. Alternative formats are now often used for photographs on websites (see JPEG and PNG)
Often used in the context of their well known search engine, but in fact an enormous organisation offering far more than that one product/service. Google Analytics for example is a service provided by Google to analyse website visitor information (amongst other things). Google maps, Google mail, Google Earth, advertising, Chrome (browser) and so on.
Home Page
Nearly always the first page opened when someone finds your website address, it’s the doorway into your site so it’s vital that it has impact and clear direction to what the site offers – and of course what your business or organisation offers!
Hosting
A service providing resources (servers) where your website can be stored for visitors to see as well as providing other services such as email, usage reporting (visitor numbers etc).
Hot Spot
A specific area of a web page (maybe part of some text, a picture or a shape) that when clicked will take the user to another part of your site, another site or perform an ‘action’. They act like buttons.
HTML
‘Hyper Text Markup Language’. The code that is used to create web pages, mainly instructions that tells browsers how content should be formatted and displayed.
Hyperlink
A connection or link between one page to another, either within your site or to an external site. These links can be in the text for a page or can be a within picture or other image. If text, it is common to see the hyperlink underlined and in a different colour.
Index
See home page. The entrance to your site and the page that will be opened when your web address is typed into a browser. Also a process used by Search Engines to collect information about websites/pages.
Internet
The global system of interconnected computer networks. Often referred to as ‘The Web’ or ‘World Wide Web’ – which is not strictly accurate as the Internet is a system, the Web is one of many services on the Internet. But let’s not get too fussy, most people refer to them as one and the same.
ISP
Internet Service Provider, an organisation that enables users to access the internet by providing connection from their computer to the internet. They often bundle in other services as well.
Javascript
This is a language often used to code some sort of interactive element in a web page such as a navigation button.
JPEG
A file format for photographs and other images. The way JPEG pictures can be compressed makes this useful for websites. It is also the format often produced by digital cameras.
Keywords
Commonly describes words contained in special parts of the website code (see ‘meta tag’) and which are relevant to your website, but also words that are relevant to your site subject contained in the text on a page These help the search engines index a web page and thus include the page and site in appropriate searches. Of equal or even greater importance is the relevance of the content within the site itself, however, keywords in meta tags should still be carefully chosen and used
Meta data
Information contained in meta tags in the site code which is not usually visible to users (unless they view the website code). Meta data may describe site authorship, site description, keywords and other information designed for the benefit of web software such as search engines.
Meta Tags
Essentially the named ‘containers’ in the page code that meta data is put into.
Navigation & Navigation bars
Visitors need to find their way around your site and you need to point them to areas that you want them to visit. This is usually achieved by using menus, commonly called navigation bars. The the user can ‘click’ on buttons in a navigation bar (usually displayed at the top or down the side of a web page) to get them to the page they want to go. Navigation can also be achieved by users clicking on ‘links’ within the site.
PNG
This stands for Portable Network Graphics and is yet another file format for photographs and pictures. It is often used instead of GIFs as it was specifically designed for use on the internet.
Publish
Loading the pages of your website to the internet and making them visible for visitors to see.
Robots
See ‘crawlers’
Search Engine
Powerful software that finds and displays information about web pages and sites. The results for a search are usually displayed in the form of lists, with links to pages and sites. The higher up the list your site is, the more entries your pages have then the more likely it is that visitors will click on the links to your site.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation. Getting the best visibility of your website in Search Engine results. That sounds simple, but to describe how it is achieved would fill a book (and give rise to substantial debate!) Fortunately there are tools and guidance provided by Search Engine providers such as Google to help web designers optimise sites. It is a complex and often changing area but important elements include links to and from other sites, within the site itself, site and page descriptions, content keywords and lots more.
Server
A computer that holds data (files) and provides services to other computers. In the context of websites it will be where your website is stored remotely to allow access by visitors on the internet.
URL
Stands for Universal Resource Locator. The way a website’s location is identified (the address).
Web
World Wide Web or WWW or W3. Billions of pages of information usually contained in web sites. The information is normally interlinked to other resources, other sites, images, documents etc – like a web. Strictly speaking it is a service that runs on the internet, but often the terms Web and internet are used as one and the same.
Website
(or Web Site) is a collection of related text, images, media that together are usually organized to be accessed via a Home page when linked to via a browser, search engine, another site or the site address is typed in.