Online glossary
The world wide web is a minefield of new terminology, Art Director Philippa Coley explains some web jargon.
Banner Ad
An advertisement placed on a web page, which acts as a hyperlink to an advertiser’s web site.
Bandwidth
A measure for the speed (amount of data) you can send through an Internet connection. The more bandwidth, the faster the connection.
Bit (Binary Digit)
The smallest unit of data stored in a computer. A bit can have the value of 0 or 1. A computer uses 8 bits to store one text character.
Bookmark
A link to a particular web site, stored (bookmarked) by a web user for future use and easy access.
Browse
Term to describe a user’s movement across the web, moving from page to page via hyperlinks, using a web browser.
Cache
A web browser or web server feature which stores copies of web pages on a computer’s hard disk.
Clickthrough Rate
The number of times visitors click on a hyperlink on a page, as a percentage of the number of times the page has been displayed.
Cookie
Information from a web server, stored on your computer by your web browser, to provide information about your visit to the website for use by the server during a later visit.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
A language for defining style (such as font, size, color, spacing, etc.) for web documents.
Database
Data stored in a computer in such a way that a computer program can easily retrieve and manipulate the data.
Flash
A vector-based multimedia format developed by Macromedia for use on the web.
Hits
The number of times a web object (page or picture) has been viewed or downloaded.
Home Page
The top-level (main) page of a web site. The default page displayed when you visit a web site.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
HTML is a language that is used to define the content, layout and the formatting of the web document.
Hyperlink
A pointer to another document or another web page. A hyperlink is a synonym for a hotlink or a link, and sometimes called a hypertext connection to another document or web page.
Intranet
A private (closed) Internet, running inside a LAN (Local Area Network).
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address)
A unique number identifying every computer on the Internet (like 197.123.22.240).
Java
A programming language developed by SUN. Mostly for programming web servers and web applets.
Linux
Open source computer operating system based on Unix. Mostly used on servers and web servers.
MySQL
Free open source database software often used on the web.
Page Hits
The number of times a web page has been visited by a user.
Ping
A method used to check the communication between two computers. A “ping” is sent to a remote computer to see if it responds.
Platform
The computer’s operating system like Windows, Linux, or OS X.
POP (Post Office Protocol)
A standard communication protocol for retrieving e-mails from an e-mail server.
SSL (Secure Socket Layer)
Software to secure and protect web site communication using encrypted transmission of data.
Tag
Notifications or commands written into a web document.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The standard way to address web documents (pages) on the Internet (like: http://www.w3schools.com/).
Web Spider
A computer program that searches the Internet for web pages. Common web spiders are the one used by search engines like Google and AltaVista to index the web. Web spiders are also called web robots or wanderers.
