Browser – A browser is a software application that is used to visit websites. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc. If you think this is obvious, think again  

Server – When a webpage is visited, data is sent from some computer somewhere to your computer over the internet. That other computer is a server, essentially just like the one you are looking at, only specially configured to deliver information to other computers asking for it. Even though any computer could technically be a server, far more commonly people purchase server functionality from companies that specialize in it. In addition to “server” being used to describe the physical machine, it also may be used to describe the software program used on that machine which handles serving up that data, like Apache.
 

URL – Uniform Resource Locator – is one of those things like this: http://hostpress.ca/contact-us/

A domain name is the first part of the example above: hostpress.ca. Anybody can purchase a domain name, from companies like ours that specialize in it. See if a domain you would like is available.
 

Accessibility – When accessibility is talked about in reference to websites, it means how easy or difficult it is to access the content for people with disabilities. For example, how easy it is for mobility impaired uses to navigate the site, blind users to read the site, or colorblind people to differentiate links from regular text.
 

Usability – Usability is similar to accessibility but differs in that it refers to ease of use for all visitors, not limited to disabled people. For example, a site that requires lengthy registration to view content or that has navigation that is in different places on different pages may be considered to have bad usability.

Findability – Findability is a subset of usability and refers to how easily users can locate the content they are looking for on a website. Often a elusively difficult task.
 

Validation – It is possible, even probable, that code contains mistakes. But who says what constitutes a mistake in code? When it comes to HTML and CSS, the W3C does. They offer tools to run these types of code through to check for errors. If it there are no errors, the code passes and is said to be valid code (or “markup”!) ALTERNATIVELY, validation can refer to data. For example, if you enter a phone number that is 5 digits long, software might “validate” that data and reject it as invalid.
 

Standards – This again refers to the W3C, the organization that puts forth the “rules” describing how browsers should behave in interpreting code. Can you imagine how difficult any job would be if everything you did you had to repeat five different times with slight variations? That’s what web standards are trying to prevent, by putting forth rules so that everyone’s job is easier things only need to be done one way. If you hear someone say they “write standards compliant code”, it probably means the code they write validates, but hopefully it also means they have an understanding of the importance of web standards and fight for them.
 

Analytics – Means data about the usage of a website. How many people viewed the website that day? What countries were they from? What browser did they use? How long did they stay? Those are questions Analytic data can answer. It is gathered by using special software built for capturing it, like Google Analytics.

Social media - is media dedicated to social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques these media tools are inexpensive compared to traditional media sources and can give an added boost your web message and campaigns.  

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets – a file ending in .css, which is linked to from the HTML, which controls the look of the rendered page.
 

HTML – Hyper Text Mark-up Language is the code that forms all websites and describes the content it contains. It is important to understand that ALL websites end up as some form of HTML, regardless of the languages used to build them. For example, a file might be PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), as in index.php, but ultimately what is served up to the browser is HTML. The file extension PHP just lets the server know to process any of the special PHP code inside before serving it up.
 

CMS – Content Management System – a software program that runs on a server with the purpose of making managing the content on the website easier. For example, a site may have hundreds of pages (like this one). Each of those pages does not exist as a separate HTML file. Instead, the content is kept in a database and injected into templates and served up as needed by the CMS.
 

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Doing things to a website specifically to rank higher in searches done on search engines like Google. On the web, traffic = money, and search engines drive big traffic, hence the big desire for everyone to rank as highly as they can.
 

RSS – Really Simple Syndication is a special (and standards based) form of XML for publishing content. For example, most blogs provide RSS of their content. Other people (even basic users) can take that RSS and use it in different ways, like republishing that content elsewhere, or just reading it through special programs, like Google Reader). May be referred to an an RSS Feed, or even just Feed by itself.


SSL Certificates - Secure Sockets Layer Certificates-or SSLs, as they're commonly called-encrypt sensitive data as it moves to and from your website. With an SSL on your site, information such as social security and credit card numbers can never be intercepted by an outside party, regardless of their intentions. SSL certificates are the single-most powerful means of reassuring wary Internet shoppers. When they see the distinctive padlock icon in the lower corner of their Web browser, visitors know that information flowing both to and from your site is protected. So there's no need to worry that someone will view the private information they provide to you. It's absolutely safe. HostPress offers a variety of SSL Certificates with up to 256-bit encryption-the highest level available. All HostPress SSLs come with a warranty and offer 99.9% browser recognition-many can be had in a matter of minutes.
 

Back End – Generically refers to anything going on “behind the scenes” of a website. There are all kinds of things that happen on complex websites underneath what people actually view in their browsers. A CMS is an example of a “Back-End”.
 

Front End – The part of a web application that people visiting the site in a browser see. Essentially the “website” part of a website.