A glossary of commonly-used web design and web development terminology to help communicate when creating your site. An overview of web design can be found here.
Blog
Short for Web Log, a blog is a website, or part of a website containing a series of articles, usually listed in reverse chronological order, and often categorised into a taxonomy of topics.
A blog post is an entry on a blog. These entries are usually articles containing new information (as opposed to pages, which usually contain constant, unchanging information, even though blog posts are technically pages too).
Browser
A web browser is a program / app for viewing websites. Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer are all examples of web browsers.
Browser Window
A browser window is simply a window belonging to a web browser. However in web design it has a very large degree of relevance since it is the containing frame for a website.
Since a browser window can be almost any size, much consideration must be given to what should happen to the content of the website given different screen sizes, which ultimately affect browser window size. The practice of planning for these variations in window size is know as responsive web design.
Domain
Essentially, a domain is an address on the web. Domains are usually in the form http://mywebsite.com or http://www.mywebsite.com
e-Commerce
eCommerce refers to trading on the web, usually in the form of an online shop.
Footer
The footer usually refers to the area at the bottom of the website. This is most often a structural element which stays constant from page to page.
Header
The header usually refers to the constant area at top of a website. This is where you’ll probably see a logo, and perhaps a menu / navigation system.
This is most-often a structural element which stays constant from page to page, although quite frequently it can be made to be different, say on on the home page.
In the case of the website you are viewing now, for computer screens the header has been moved to the side, making it a sidebar, although as far as the code goes it is still technically a header, which has relevance from various aspects, including SEO. On mobile devices the header moves to the top as per-usual.
Home Page
The home page is almost always the front page of the site. If your audience is primarily coming to your website via a search engine, ideally the home page should provide a clear, engaging overview of what the website is about.
In the case of word-of-mouth, or referrals from other websites, the audience invariably know what the purpose of the website is and may not require an informational home page.
Hosting
Hosting either refers to the physical computer/s – known as servers – where your website resides; the company that provides or manages the physical servers; or both.
Menu
A menu is a type of navigation, usually consisting of a list of pages in the website.
Menu Bar
A website’s navigation usually consists of a menu bar which allows a visitor to link to different parts of the website.
In a broader use of the term, navigation can be any element which allows different content to be shown, such as arrows on a slideshow.
Post
Broadly-speaking a post is a type of submission on the web. In the context of your website this refers to blog posts.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness, or responsive web design, is the practice of planning what should happen to the same website on different screen sizes. Computer screens, laptop screens, tablets and smartphones are examples of devices with different screen sizes.
Site Inner
The site inner is usually the area in-between the structural parts of the site, such as the header, navigation, and footer.
Most often this is the part of the site which contains changing content such as pages and blog posts. This area inside the site inner is often referred to as the content area.
Page / Static Page
A static page is a web page that has constant, seldom-changing information, such as an About page. In WordPress and other systems the term “page” is simply used to refer to static pages, as opposed to “post”.
Web Page
A web page is a document on the world wide web. Usually, and for our needs, as a single part of a website. When referring to blog posts it is worth noting that these are also web pages, as are “pages” aka “static pages”.
Website
A website is a collection of related web pages served from a single domain.
WordPress
WordPress started as blogging software, but it has expanded as the easiest, most flexible, and widely-supported way to make a website. At the time of writing, WordPress is powering 20% of websites on the world-wide-web. The WordPress software is free and open-source.
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