Website Design Wiltshire, Website design Swindon, Website design Marlborough,

Glossary

Here are some of the basic terms you might hear NJM Consultants staff mention when talking to you about your website:

TERM	BASIC DEFINITION
Broadband	high-speed internet access.
Content	the information on a website, ie: photos and descriptive text.
Connection Speed	how fast you are connected to the internet.
CMS	stands for "Content Management System". A database structured style website, where the page details are stored, and has an administration area that allows the website content to be updated directly without the need of third party software.
CSS	stands for "Cascading Style Sheets". A new way we handle the formatting on your website. It is much more flexible than the older way of handling formatting, and allows us to make global changes to your website in just a few seconds. For example, if you suddenly wanted all the black text to be red - we simply change one file and it applies it to every single page. Whereas the older way of doing things was that you had to change the colour of the text on each and every page individually. That could be very time consuming if you have a large site!
Database	interactive information storage, typically used on websites using online catalogues, but can also used to allow your customers to access their account information etc through your website.
Dial-up Account	a phone number your computer calls into with a username and password to access the web. A dial-up account uses a standard modem through your phone line and is slower than a broadband account.
Domain Name	the individual name you buy for your website ie: www.gopher-systems.co.uk.
E-commerce	means "electronic commerce"; a website that allows users to purchase products or services online.
Form	a page on a website that users fill in details to be sent off to the website owner. Typically used as an "enquiry form".
FTP Details	the name of the computer (or "server") that a website resides on along with username and password to access the files.
Hacker	someone who illegally accesses websites and databases using a computer.
Hit	each time a user accesses one of your pages or images it registers a "hit" with the server. This is not an indication of how many people have viewed your site, just an indication of how many files have been looked at overall.
Host / Hosting	a computer connected to the world wide web on which a website's files permanently reside.
ISP	stands for "Internet Service Provider". This is the company through which you obtain internet access. You will have an account with an ISP for your dial-up, or broadband.
Meta Tags	hidden coding on a website that details information about the site and allows Search Engines to index it more easily.
Nominet	Nominet UK is the registry for ALL .uk internet names. They manage the authoritative database of .uk domain name registrations. They are a not-for-profit company and have members instead of shareholders. Any changes you require to your domain name, including contact details, transfer of ownership, ownership disputes, renewals etc are all processed by Nominet. Please visit www.nominet.org.uk for more details.
Search Engine	a website that indexes 1000s of websites on the web for users to search through to find a specific website.
Secure Server	a server that has extra security on it to protect credit card transaction information from being stolen by hackers.
Session	each time a users accesses your website, no matter how many pages they look at this is called a "Session".
Server	a fancy name for a computer. This is a computer that "serves" website files out to the world wide web for users to look at. A website is typically "hosted" on a "server". Server-type computers are not usually used by people for anything other than data storage.
Thumbnail Image	a small "thumb sized" image on a website that can be clicked on to view a larger version of the image.
Unique Visitor	the specific number of people who have viewed your site, not including repeat visitors.
URL	a full website address that typically looks like this: http://www.websitename.co.uk. It stands for "Universal Resource Locator".
VC	the "Visual Concept" is a non-functional graphical representation of what your site could look like.
Visitor	each time a person accesses your website they are recorded as a Visitor to your site.