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Website Glossary of Terms
Introduction
When you look to a web development company to develop a website for you, it is important that you understand the basic structures that underpin a website as well as the terms and language used. If you do, you will be able to ask the right questions and also look online with more directed searches.
Domain Name
A "domain name" is what you see in the address bar of your internet browser when you view a website; it must be unique and is sometimes referred to as a "URL" (uniform resource locator). As an example, www.google.com is the domain name of Google. Domain names are typically managed by specific companies (such as netfirms, domainsatcost and so on) that are separate from the computers that actually store your website (see hosting below). Domain names are rented and you typically renew them every 1, 2, 5 or 10 years. Domain names cost varying amounts (from $10 upwards) and can be available (nobody owns the name yet) or unavailable (someone owns the name - meaning if you want to use it you will have to contact them to buy it from them).
Hosting
When your domain name is entered into a browser, a "domain name server" (DNS) will locate, based on the domain name, the actual computer(s) that store the files that make up your website. Each computer that is on the internet has a unique address called an "IP address" (a string of numbers with '.' characters between them). For instance, the address www.themediafarm.ca is hosted on computers that have the IP address 96.30.62.5. When you pay for "hosting" you are renting space on one or more computers such that they can respond when someone types in your address in their web browser.
SEO
SEO means search engine optimization. It is a misnomer since there is no way to "optimize" a website for search engines, given that their methods of ranking your site are proprietary and hidden. Search engines (in particular Google) read your website in a way that is similar, but different, to humans. They expect information to be laid out in a certain way and read the text to gain information about the overall purpose of each of your pages. Once purpose/content is determined, a weighting is applied to your web pages based on how relevant they will be to a user's search criteria but also, crucially, the weighting is affected by what other websites/webpages link to your website (have a link in their text or from an image that, when clicked on, would open up your website). If the other websites that link to you rank highly in Google, then you "share" some of the "juice" from their site (the "juice" is a loose term to describe how well ranked/rated the website is). It is therefore crucial to accomplish 2 things; one for the purpose and content of your pages to be easily determined and two for your website to be linked-to from many other, high quality websites.
Social Media
Social media comprises websites that incorporate a "social networking" component on which you advertise (either directly or indirectly) your website and/or services. Examples would be where you have a facebook page for your business and then people "like" the page, or where you have a Twitter feed and people "follow" your tweets. Social media marketing is a sub-discipline of online marketing that seeks to understand how social media can be used effectively to promote your business.
Feed
A feed is information available from your website or from other websites, that is formatted in a way that it can be sent as a single, simple text file. An example of a feed would be a news feed, wherein if you visit a specific page on another website it will return you a file that contains information about news items, such as date, summary, links to images and so forth. A commonly used feed is from Twitter, wherein when you have a Twitter account, a website can request the feed from your twitter account and then be told to display it in a sidebar and so on.
Static information
"Static" information is raw text/images that are usually in a single file and can only be changed by directly editing that file. An example of static information would be a text file (usually an HTML file which is a bit like a normal text file but is written in a language called HTML such that it can be displayed correctly as a web page).
Dynamic information
"Dynamic" information is any information on your website that is gathered from other sources or is and/or is calculated/arranged on-the-fly when you visit the page. An example of simple dynamic information would be a twitter feed being displayed on your website.
CMS
A CMS is a Content Management System and is generally a system for allowing a website to show dynamic information. A CMS-run website stores most of your content in a database and many of the web pages are created dynamically on-the-fly when you visit them. The reason most websites are run using a CMS is because it can be much easier to edit, backup and/or manage a website. Examples of CMSs are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
Blog
A blog is a loose term to describe a set of entries of information (called posts) that can be categorized and are (usually) dated. For instance a "news" blog would show news posts in a timely manner, the most recent first. However a blog can be used to run an entire website if the purpose of the website is mainly to show dynamic information - the act of splitting up content into categories and posts makes it very easy for an end-user to manage a website themselves.