Affiliate programs. Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site.
Audio/Video streaming. Audio/video streaming allows you to provide visitors to your site with a real-time sound or video experience.
Backbone. The network of connections and high-speed lines that forms the infrastructure of the Internet. An important consideration in choosing a Web site host is that host’s proximity to the backbone. The less intermediate network distance between your provider and the backbone, the faster and more reliable your Web site will be.
Bandwidth. The amount of data that can be sent through a network connection, measured in bits per second (bps).
Banner ads. Banner ads are one of the primary methods of advertising on the Internet. They are usually small graphics with a very brief advertising message.
Browser. Short for web browser. Software used to view web pages. Internet Explorer , Safari, and Firefox are browsers.
Bulletin board. A computerized version of the bulletin boards found in stores and other public places, where people can leave messages and advertise things they want to buy or sell.
CGI scripts. Programs that run on a Web server, in response to input from a browser. CGI scripts link the server and a program running on the system; for example, CGI scripts are used with interactive forms.
Chat room. A real-time electronic forum; a virtual room where visitors can meet others and share ideas on a particular subject. There are chat rooms on the Internet, Bulletin Board Services, and other online services.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI). A set of rules that describe how a Web server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software talks to the Web server. Usually, a CGI program is a small routine that takes data from a Web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an email message, or turning the data into a database query.
Domain name. The unique name that identifies an Internet site. For instance, www.globalspex.com is the domain name for GlobalSpex.
Domain name registration. Most Web designers will offer to register your chosen domain name for you. Alternatively, you can choose to register your domain name through a variety of domain name sellers. Regardless of the method you choose there is usually a small fee between $5—%15 for registration.
DHTML. A combination of HTML enhancements, style sheets, and scripts that allow for animation, interactions, and dynamic updating of Web pages. Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer have implemented Dynamic HTML with proprietary methods, but are expected to implement the W3C’s Dynamic Object Model (DOM) in future versions.
E-commerce. Electronic commerce is the exchange of goods or services via the Internet.
E-newsletter: Electronic newsletter published online and distributed via e-mail.
Encryption. Securing areas of your Web site with encryption can allow visitors to your site to submit credit card payments online or access sensitive information (e.g. account information).
Flash. Animation software for Windows and the Mac from Macromedia. It is used to develop interactive graphics for Web sites as well as desktop presentations and games. Flash sequences on the Web are displayed by a Web browser plug-in and offline presentations are run by a Flash player that can be included on a floppy or CD-ROM.
GIF. (Graphics Interchange Format) A bit mapped graphics file format. It supports 8-bit color (256 colors) and compresses the files well. This translates into faster load times GIFs include a color table that includes the most representative 256 colors used. For example, a picture of the forest would include mostly greens. This method provides excellent realism in an 8-bit image.
Guestbook. A guestbook allows visitors to your site to give you their contact information (e.g. name, email or postal address, telephone number, business). You may be able to use this information to send email or direct marketing newsletters or simply collect marketing information about your customers.
HTML. (HyperText Markup Language) The document format used on the World Wide Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags, or codes, embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Web. Each link contains the URL, or address, of a Web page residing on the same server or any server worldwide, hence “World Wide” Web.
Hyperlink. A jump from text or from an image map to a page or other type of file on the World Wide Web. In World Wide Web pages, hyperlinks are the primary way to navigate between pages and among Websites.
IP Address. (Internet Protocol Address) The standard way of identifying a computer that is connected to the Internet, much the way a telephone number identifies a telephone on a telephone network. The IP address is four numbers separated by periods, and each number is less than 256, for example, 192.200.44.69. Your system administrator or Internet service provider will assign your machine an IP address.
JavaScript. A popular scripting language that is widely supported in Web browsers and other Web tools. It is easier to use than Java, but not as powerful and deals mainly with the elements on the Web page. On the client, JavaScript is maintained as source code embedded into an HTML document. On the server, it is compiled into byte code (intermediate language), similar to Java programs.
JPEG. (Joint Photographic Experts Group) Primarily used for still photographs. Pronounced “jay-peg.” An ISO/ITU standard for compressing still images that is popular due to its high compression capability translating into faster load times.
Landing Page. The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.
Meta Tags. An HTML tag that identifies the contents of a Web page. Using a format, Meta tags contain such things as a general description of the page, keywords for search engines and copyright information.
Microsoft NT. The brand name for Microsoft’s server operating platform. See also, Unix.
Plug-In. A single document in a World Wide Website written using the HTML language.
PNG. Much like a GIF, Portable Network Graphics is a bitmap image format that employs lossless data compression . Usually best for graphics with transparent backgrounds.
POP3. (Post Office Protocol 3) A standard mail server commonly used on the Internet. It provides a message store that holds incoming e-mail until users log on and downloads it. POP3 is a simple system with little selectivity. All pending messages and attachments are downloaded at the same time.
Portal. A Web “super site” that provides a variety of services including online advertising, Web searching, news, white and yellow pages directories, free e-mail, discussion groups, online shopping and links to other sites. If local, these portals offer community events and information.
QuickTime. Multimedia extensions to the Macintosh starting with System 7 that add sound and video capabilities. Apple also provides a QuickTime for Windows version for Windows -based PCs.
Pay-Per-Click. Form of online advertising where advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. Once clicked, the user is sent to a landing page directed toward that key phrase.
Resolution. The degree of sharpness of a displayed or printed character or image. On screen, resolution is expressed as a matrix of dots. For example, the VGA resolution of 640×480 means 640 dots (pixels) across each of the 480 lines. Sometimes the number of colors is added to the spec; for example, 640 x 480 x 6 or 640 x 480 x 256. The same resolution looks sharper on a small screen than a larger one.
Rich Media. Information that consists of any combination of graphics, audio, video, and animation, which is more storage and bandwidth intensive than ordinary text.
Rich Text Format (RTF). A standard for specifying the formatting of documents. Some documents formatting languages using RTF include Hypertext Markup Language.
Search Engines. Software that searches for data based on some criteria. Although search engines have been around for decades, they have been brought to the forefront since the World Wide Web exploded onto the scene.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM). form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement like pay-per-click and contextual advertising.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
Search Engine Strategy (SES). A congruence of ideas that integrate focuses on search engine marketing and search engine optimization.[
Shopping cart. Shopping carts serve two functions: to manage your Web-based inventory and to help you design a browser interface for displaying your product or service line.
SKU. stock-keeping unit . An individual and unique number for a product in stock.
Streaming Video. Video transmission over a data network. The term implies a one-way transmission to the viewer, in which both the client and server software cooperate for uninterrupted motion. The client side buffers a few seconds of video data before it starts sending it to the screen, which compensates for momentary delays in packet delivery. Videoconferencing, on the other hand, requires real-time two-way transmission for effective results.
Secure Layer Encryption or SSL: Cryptographic protocol which provide a secure communication on the internet.
Web Browser. The program that serves as your front end to the World Wide Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser’s Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. The home page is an index to other pages on that site that you can jump to by clicking a “click here” message or an icon. Links on that site may take you to other related sites.
Web Page. A single document in a World Wide Website written using the HTML language.
XML. (EXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data from the W3C. It uses a similar tag structure as HTML; however, whereas HTML defines how elements are displayed, XML defines what those elements contain. HTML uses predefined tags, but XML allows tags to be defined by the developer of the page. Thus, virtually any data items, such as product, sales rep, and amount due, can be identified, allowing Web pages to function like database records. It is expected to become the dominant format for electronic data interchange.
Unix. The name of a group of server operating platforms from Sun, RedHat, HP, and others. See also, Microsoft NT.
URL. Uniform Resource Locator (formerly Universal Resource Locator). An Internet address which tells a browser where to find an Internet resource. For example, the URL for GlobalSpex is http://www.globalspex.com/.
