Glossary of Terms (A-E F-L M-Z)

FAQ -- (Frequently Asked Questions)

FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet Grooming and Cryptography. FAQs are usually written by people who have tired of answering the same question over and over.

Flash

Flash is a vector-based, multimedia technology developed by Macromedia that can be embedded in HTML pages. Flash files can take the form of animations, games and even whole Websites.

Form Mail Scripts

Form Mail scripts let you create forms to place on your Website that users can fill out. All results are then e-mailed to you to review.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows you to upload files to your Website from your computer. It's a necessity if you're using a Website design software package such as DreamWeaver to build and/or update your Website.

FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface.

GIF -- (Graphic Interchange Format)

A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same color. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.

Gigabyte (GB)

A measure of data storage and/or data transfer on your Web site.
1 Gigabyte = 1,000 Megabytes = 1,000,000 Kilobytes = 1,000,000,000 Bytes

Guestbook

A Guestbook allows your Web site visitors to digitally sign in and make comments about your site.

Hits

This term refers to the number of files that are downloaded from a Web server. Keeping track of hits is a way of measuring traffic to a Web site. The number of hits a site receives is usually much greater than the number of actual visitors. That's because a Web page can contain more than one file.

Home Page (or Homepage)

Several meanings. Originally, the Web page that your browser is set to use when it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main Web page for a business, organization, or person.

Host

A host is any computer directly connected to a network that acts as a repository for services (such as e-mail, FTP, or World Wide Web) available for other computers on the network.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

A programming language used to build Web sites; it defines how the Web pages will look and how the visitor will be able to move around the Web site. It used to be that you had to know HTML to design and build a Web site. But today there are online templates and tools, as well as software packages, which allow you to build a Web site without knowing HTML.

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address. ICANN is also responsible for accrediting the domain name registrars.

Index

The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the Web pages they have found from crawling the Web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all Web sites that have been categorized.

Internet

The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP).

The Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections etc. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, along with many other services including e-mail, file sharing and others described below.

IP Address

Each machine connected to the Internet has an address known as an Internet Protocol address (IP address). The IP address takes the form of four numbers separated by dots (i.e., 165.113.245.2).

ISP -- (Internet Service Provider)

An Internet service provider (ISP) is a business or organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services. They provide services such as Internet transit, domain name registration and hosting, dial-up or DSL access, leased line access and colocation.

Java

Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems to create executable content (i.e. self-running applications) that can be easily distributed. Developers use Java to create special programs that can be incorporated in Web pages to make them interactive.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a scripting language that allows dynamic behavior to be specified within HTML documents.

JPEG

JPEG files use a compression format developed for still images. If you've ever received pictures over the Internet, they were probably in JPEG format. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.

Kilobyte

A thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (210) bytes.

Linux

Linux is a UNIX-like computer operating system. It was first released by its inventor, Linus Torvalds, in 1991. There are numerous of Linux able to run on almost every available type of computer hardware.

Linux is the cornerstone of the "LAMP" server-software combination (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) which has achieved popularity among developers, and which is one of the more common platforms for website hosting.

Login Name

A login name is the account name used to access a computer system. Also called user ID or user name, it is a way people identify themselves to their online service or Internet access provider.