Website Terms Glossary
Acrobat (Adobe)
Acrobat is a product of Adobe Systems Inc. Originally released in 1993, the Acrobat PDF file format is a popular way of distributing forms and documents on the web due to the ubiquity of Adobe’s free Acrobat PDF reader.
Back-end Code
Refers to the website coding that will be processed at the web host. Examples of back-end coding are PHP and MySQL. Back-end code is first processed at the web-host and the results are then sent to the site visitors computer for front-end processing.
Blog
A Weblog, commonly shortened to just “blog”, is simply an online journal. The author of a blog is referred to as a blogger. For business’s blogs can be a good way to develop a following to a website and may prove helpful in generating website traffic from search engines.
Client Side
Client-side refers to processing done locally on the website visitors computer. Examples of server side processing are running JavaScript, rendering XHTML and CSS, Acrobat documents and Flash animations. The web host (client-side) simply sends the unprocessed file (for example the XHTML markup and CSS files) and the visitors computer does all the heavy lifting.
CSS
The acronym CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Style Sheets, as they are commonly referred to, provide a fine level control to the look and feel of a website and are vastly superior to the old-school table based websites of the past.
CMS
CMS stands for Content Management System. Before CMS based websites, every page on a website needed to be hand coded by some-one skilled in HTML at the very least. CMS’s simplify site maintenance by storing site content in a database and then applying the site content to a specific website template when requested by a website visitor. Site content is entered using the CMS back-end administration panels which require little knowledge of XHTML to make simple changes and additions to the website.
Dreamweaver (Adobe)
Dreamweaver is the popular Adobe website creation and management tool. Although Dreamweaver can be used in a WSIWYG mode, it also can be used as a code editor to facilitate in the coding of XHTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript. Because of the cleaner code and greater control obtained when using Dreamweaver as a code editor, all our sites are built using the code editor features of the product.
Front-end
Front-end code is mark-up and code that is processed on the site visitors local computer. Examples of front-end code are XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery.
Illustrator (Adobe)
Adobe Illustrator is Adobe’s vector graphics design program. Vector graphics are commonly used to create high quality logos, icons, and line-art. The strength of vector graphics are their ability to be re-sized to any size without a loss in sharpness that would be present in a bit-mapped image. The reason for this is vector graphics are really composed of mathematical instructions defining the outlines of an object. When an object is re-sized the outlines are simply redrawn. Bit-mapped images, on the other hand, will begin to loose sharpness and appear pixilated when enlarged. The drawback to vector images is that photographs and other highly detailed images are not good candidates for the vector format. For photographs, the bit-map tool of choice is Adobe Photoshop.
JavaScript
JavaScript is typically used as a client-side scripting language due to it’s ability to run on all current modern web browsers. An example of a commonly used JavaScript feature is form validation. By using JavaScript to validate a form the site visitor can be notified of possible errors before the form is processed at the web-host.
jQuery
jQuery is what’s referred to as a JavaScript framework. A relative newcomer to front-end web design, it was first released in 2006, jQuery has taken the world by storm for it’s ability to simplify JavaScript development. jQuery is an open-source library of JavaScript code that has been tested on current major browsers, including IE6. A browser notorious for having issues. Numerous plug-ins are available for adding everything from visual sizzle to visitor friendly form validation.
MySQL
MySQL is the worlds most popular open source relational database management system. Databases are a key component of blogging platfoms/CMS’s. MySQL is used to power WordPress as well as other leading blogging platforms/CMS’s.
Open Source
Open source software is software that is freely distributed without any licensing fees. For developers, the source code is also available free of charge allowing modification to fit the needs of a particular project, personal or commercial. In the web development arena popular open source products include: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and WordPress.
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. The strength of this document format is it’s ability to retain the look and feel of an original printed document. Unlike websites which tend to be more fluid and dependent on the interpretation the visitors web browser, PDF documents can be set up to always look the same. PDF’s can also be used to create an electronic version of a traditional paper form with the advantage of being printable, savable, e-mailable and possibly most important… readable (no need to try to interpret illegible handwriting).
PHP
PHP is popular open-source programming language used to construct web sites. It is used to add dynamic functionality into the back-end end of a website. For this reason PHP runs soley at the webhost with the results of its operations being passed to the site visitors computer. As for the name PHP… When it first appeared in 1995 PHP stool for Personal Home Page. I was later re-named to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor while still keeping the initials PHP.
Photoshop (Adobe)
Photoshop is Adobe’s industry standard bit-map editing software. While the name Photoshop suggests that it is used to touch up photographs, in practice it is used for a whole lot more! In the hands of a skilled user, Photoshop can be used to create original artwork for websites in addition to modifying and combining existing artwork.
Server-side
Server-side refers to processing done at the web-host before a web page is sent to the site visitors computer. Examples of server side processing are PHP scripting and MySQL database queries.
WordPress
WordPress is a leading open-source blogging platform that has grown into a respectable CMS for sites not requiring the complexity and cost of more complicated CMS systems. WordPress offers both a simple online version that is limited in features and a version that is installed on a web hosting account. The latter version is highly customizable to meet the needs of most small to medium sized business websites.
