Glossary of website terms
There are a lot of acronyms and jargon involved in website design. Here, we provide you with a list of terms that may help.
Accessibility
In context of website design, accessibility is making sure that your site is able to be viewed and navigated by people with disabilities such as visual or motor impairments. Such users may use special software rather than the mainstream web browsers. Badly programmed sites are often unusable by the disabled, and may expose the site owner to legal liability under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). See the DirectGov DDA website for more information.
Adwords
Google’s PPC advertising scheme. Your company advert is displayed next to the search results when people search for keywords that you are targeting with your advertising.
adCenter
The Microsoft search engine PPC advertising service.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets. A coding language used to control the layout and visual style of your website.
DDA
The Disability Discrimination Act – Legislation that makes it illegal to discriminate against disabled people when providing goods, facilities and services (such as websites).
Domain name
Your website name i.e. www.yourcompany.com
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. FTP software can be used to upload websites and files to the web server provided by your hosting company.
Hosting
A hosting service puts your website on a web server that can be accessed by anyone on the internet.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language – The code that your website will be made up of. HTML consists of scary tags that look like
<head> and </div>.
PDA
“Personal digital assistant” – a handheld computer increasingly used in business and for mobile internet access. For an example see Fujitsu Siemens PDA.
PPC
Pay-Per-Click advertising. You pay a small amount each time someone clicks on your advert.
Sage
Widely used business and accounting software. “Sage is a leading supplier of business management software and services to 5 million customers worldwide. From start-ups to larger organisations, we make it easier for companies to manage their business processes.” (From www.sage.co.uk)
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation – Creating relevant content containing your chosen keywords that looks good to search engines.
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium: “an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards”. See their website at http://www.w3.org/
Web Server
A powerful computer that contains many websites and allows people on the internet to access them.
