Website terminology

I have on numerous occasions spoken to some of my clients, and sometimes find that they do not have a clue of what it is that I'm saying, or talking about!

So, this page will be dedicated to all the words and phrases we web developers tend to use, so that you can also impress someone at a party!

HTML or XHTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and XHTML Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. Now, these are big words, but don't be afraid! It is the programming language used in all websites. Each and every website on the internet has some form of HTML or XHTML. So, if I talk about the HTML, I'm referring to the "coding" part of the website, the part nobody ever sees. If you'd like to see what it looks like, go ahead and click View in the menu, then Source (In Internet Explorer 8 that is - for Firefox click View in the menu, then Page Source, and in Google Chrome just rightclick anywhere and click View page source)

URL (also website address)

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator (thats a mouthfull!) - it is the address of a web page. For example, the URL to this page is http://www.rgcms.co.za/WebsiteTerminology.html - so it's basically the website's address.

Domain name

The domain name is the "overall" address of a website, ie. the domain where all the web pages for a specific website will be. The domain name for this website is rgcms.co.za

Hosting

Have a read through on our website hosting article, to see what hosting is all about...

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Stylesheet - this is what makes a website look nice. A stylesheet specifies how everything on a website must look. What the background colour must be, the main font used, the font size, the line height of the paragraphs, how the links must look, how big the headings must be, what image must be in the banner - EVERYTHING. Without stylesheets, all website will basically look exactly the same! CSS also specifies what the layout of the website must be. For example, this website has a banner at the top, which is in the center of the page, and beneath the banner it has two columns, with the first column being smaller than the second one, both also in the middel, and at the bottom of the page you will see a footer. Everything about how the website looks, is set in the CSS file!