Website Design X - Glossary

Some clients may be fairly new to the whole world of web design and hosting therefore it can be quite confusing at times. We have put together this glossary to try and explain some of the terms you may have read and not fully understood.

Pages

Websites are built up of numerous pages; you have your main index page which is the page you automatically go to when you type the name of a website in and then numerous others depending on how many links the site has. There are also 'sub-pages' where one page is broken up into many, this will be discussed with you in more detail during your quotation.

Hosting

The hosting is what enables your site to go online, a hosting company has a server which holds all of your websites files on and enables it to go online, whenever you want to change your site you have to upload the files on to your hosts server again and they will automatically change on your website. A good host is key as that determines how fast your site will be at loading; often the cheaper ones take the longest. You also generally get assigned numerous email addresses by your host in the format of yourname@domainname.com.

Domain Name

Your domain name is key; this is the address that you type in to get to the website for example www.google.com, this is Googles domain name. It is also possible to link numerous domains to one site like www.google.co.uk etc. Domains are leased for a certain period of time chosen by yourself, you may only want it for a year then renew it if your site is doing well or you may want to get a 10 year lease if you've paid a lot for your site. Domains come with different extensions; the most popular ones are .co.uk, .com, .biz, .net, .org.uk and .mobi.

Domain Registrar

The domain registrar is the person/company who has been authorised to sell the domains to you, for example, www.doteasy.com or www.123-reg.co.uk.

FTP

This stands for file transfer protocol; this is the method of connecting to your host's server and uploading your files to enable them to go online.

Content Management System (CMS)

This is a user friendly program that allows you to manager all aspects of the content on your website with ease, from text to images and new links. It is a way of enabling people who aren't technically minded to be able to update their sites with needing outside help or having to learn a new skill.

Ecommerce

This is buying and selling online, Ecommerce is just a technical way of saying shopping. Whether it is selling software or songs via download or actual items that need to be posted you need an ecommerce site to be able to sell them in the first place.

Payment Gateway

The Payment Gateways are companies who process and authorise payments for your online shop/ecommerce site. When it comes to paying for an item on a website you are redirected to the Payment Gateway that will process that payment for you, it will instantly accept or decline the payment and transfer the money. The most popular company who does this service is PayPal which is free to use and has no start up costs however, you pay a small percentage of your sale to them as a fee. There are various others like Nochex, Google Checkout and Worldpay. The other option is to get in touch with your bank and do it via someone like Barclays.

SSL Certificate

A Secure Socket Layer Certificate (SSL Certificate) allows any information that is typed in on the domain or hosting account it has been linked to to become encrypted, it is the most popular way of securing your site from online fraud. At the same time as giving your customers peace of mind you are also discouraging 'hackers' from targeting your site. They are often used on sites where you are entering personal information or buying products i.e. Ecommerce sites.

Webmail

People often use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express for emails but the major alternative is webmail. Rather than having a separate program on your computer to access your emails you can go online and access them anywhere in the world as long as it has an internet connection. So rather than the information being stored on your computer it's kept online all the time. It is becoming more and more popular nowadays as it means if your computer gets spyware or a virus and becomes unusable you can still get in touch with everybody you need to via another computer.

POP3/SMTP

These are the names of the servers used by email addresses that aren't webmail based to send and receive mail. You need this information to use Outlook Express and also devices such as the Apple iPhone.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language used by programmers to design websites, it is read by the browers when they are opening web pages for you in a matter or miliseconds. XHTML is used when the standard HTML and other design languages such as CSS or JavaScript are used together on a site.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style that helps separate the text from the layout of a site, this is the preferred method by most search engine which means that SEO (search engine optimisation) work is more successful.