Web term glossary

ADA

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). For the web, this applies to the structure and accessibility that requires pages to be read through a reader and very fast loading.

Adwords

AdWords by Google offer pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. This provides effective search engine marketing that ensures best placement to direct traffic to focused microsites.

Aggregator

A feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. 

Analytics

Web analytics is the study of the behavior of web site visitors and provides reports on how people find your site and how they interact.

Blog

A blog (a contraction of the words web and log) is a web site where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as personal online diaries.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet that globally governs the look and feel of the web site and allows the site to be optimized for various views of the site such as ADA and PDA compliancy.

Dreamweaver

Adobe Dreamweaver is a web developer software that has become an industry standard for web designer and programmers across the spectrum for developing rich web sites using the latest technology.

Facebook

The free-access web site that allows users to join one or more networks, such as a school, place of employment, or geographic region, to easily connect with other people in the same network. Allows users to add friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos.

Flash Video

Standard for videos to stream on the web and is based on Adobe Flash technology, which 98% of the computers support. Notable users of the Flash video format include YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! and MySpace.

GUI

Acronym: Graphical User Interface.

IM

Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. This has become a standard for today's generation. This format is also supported by cell phones and PDAs.

Microsite

A microsite, also known as a minisite or weblet, is an internet web design term referring to an individual web page or cluster of pages with focused marketing content to specific interests. This tactic is useful in providing targeted rich media (interactive video and audio) experiences.

MySpace

MySpace is a free-access social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.

PDA

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld computers, that over the years have improved in form and functionality.  Most function as mobile phones and included web browsers, although PDAs typically require a different view of the site other than the desktop or laptop browsers.

Podcast

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.

Rich Media

In general, multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms.

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. The process of organizing and structuring your web site content in a manner that makes it rank better in search engines like Yahoo!, Google and others. SEO has become increasingly valuable to organizations and additional services such as keyword research, back-linking and other methods have been utilized to help sites rank even higher.

Skype

Skype allows users to make telephone calls over the internet to other Skype users free of charge and to land lines and cell phones for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer, short message service, video conferencing and the ability to circumvent firewalls.

Social Network

A social network is software to build online or virtual communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 refers to web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. Examples: Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, and AdSense.

Wikis

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely collaborate on content and research. Derived from Wikipedia, which has become an online encyclopedia where anyone can collaborate and document information.

WYSIWYG

Acronym: What You See Is What You Get.

YouTube

YouTube is a popular video sharing web site where users can upload, view and share video clips.