Do you own an existing website, do you need a new website or are you in the process of having a website developed? It can be difficult to navigate the world of web development especially when you don’t speak the language and are unsure of what solutions are out there and what would be the best fit for you.
Don’t worry, we have you covered!
In this post, we’ll websplain (see what we did there?) some of the basic website terminologies for beginners.
Content Management System
CMS (Content Management System) is an online application that enables digital content to be created, edited, collaborated on, published, and stored. For example WordPress, Joomla, Wixs, Shopify etc.
WordPress
One of the best examples of a CMS system is WordPress – WordPress is an open-source website development platform and content management system (CMS). Emphasising accessibility, performance, security and ease of use. Providing a simple dashboard – clients can easily create blogs and update content and images. Used by more than 60 million websites, including 30.6% of the top 10 million websites as of April 2018, WordPress is the most popular website management system in use. WordPress is also SEO friendly, responsive, secure and stable. New features and updates are frequently being released.
e-Commerce
The process of buying and selling products and services through an online store on a website. We can link your online store to payment gateways to enable the use of credit cards, debit cards, snapscan, zapper, PayPal etc. allowing for instant payments. With an online store, you can promote and sell anything from physical goods, digital products, services, downloads, and bookings to subscriptions, memberships, and online courses, just to name a few.
Learner Management System
A LMS (Learning Management System) is a web-based software platform used for managing educational material, providing documentation and certificates, tracking, and reporting, and for delivering educational content. Using a learning management system (LMS), you can plan, implement and evaluate specific learning processes.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process to improve your website’s visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engine optimization is critical should you want your website / business to be found in top positions in organic search engine results for various search terms to what the user is searching for. Websites with SEO will have an advantage in visitors and customers finding and visiting their websites. While SEO is not an overnight process, by following best practices which include content, keywords, being responsive, amongst many others, your site and business will see results.
Responsive
The process whereby your website automatically adapts and resizes according to various devices, such as desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones, ensuring a great user experience.
Cache
Cache is the temporary storage space on a device which improves the website’s performance. Your browser keeps a record of the websites you visit by storing the webpages and files in the cache. As a result, your browser doesn’t have to re-download them again, the pages will open much faster, saving you time.
Cookies
Various sites use cookies to store information about you and your browsing habits. A cookie is a small file that a website sends to your device to allow the site to monitor your activities and remember information about you.
HTML
The structure of a web page is coded with HTML (HyperText Markup Language) – this is a basic scripting language for rendering web pages on the world wide web. Another common code format is PHP.
CSS
Like HTML is used to for a web page’s structure, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a design language used to visually style a web page, like the colours, fonts and content spacing.
Domain & Website Hosting
To have a website, you will need to have a domain name and a web hosting account. They are two separate services that work together to make websites possible. Basically a domain name is like the address of your business, whereas web hosting is the place where all the files of your website lives (like your business offices) that the domain address points to. To own a domain you will need to register a domain name with a registrar. All domain names are unique. You will then need to select a hosting package for you website depending on your needs.
Website Maintenance
A website maintenance plan is a monthly premium service to keep your website up-to-date. This covers the updating of (in this case) WordPress core framework, plugins, and theme. A plan could also include the update of website banners, page content, e-commerce store products, accommodation specials, blog and news pages etc. Maintenance plans include monthly backups, site security and functionality monitoring.
We hope that this article has helped you learn some of the basic website terminology.
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