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Domain name
A domain name is simply the root address of a website - e.g. www.yourchurchontheweb.com. Domain names are sold by registrars. Some registrars are both cheap and good. Others may not provide the best service. If you don't already have a domain we can purchase one for you - that means your hosting and domain is kept in one place. '.org' stands for organisation and most church, charity and non-profit sites will end with this extension (and regional variations of it, such as .org.uk).
FTP
Stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's a very common method of transferring one or more files from one computer to another. FTP is a specific way to connect to another Internet site to retrieve and send files. With our sites there is no need to use an FTP client as you update your site 'online' and can upload any files such as images through the CMS.
Hosting
If your website is like a house, then your hosting is the land it's placed upon. Every site site on the web is 'hosted' on one of the many servers (massive computers) that all link up together to make the 'World Wide Web')
HTML
Stands for HyperText Markup Language. A lot of web pages are written in a language called HTML. To learn a little HTML is simple. To learn to write HTML well takes a lot of hard work. When you use one of our sites, no knowledge of html is necessary although you do have the option to use it if you wish. When editing one of your pages it's very similar to writing a 'Microsoft Word' document.
Hyperlinks
Also known as links. Hyperlinks connects you from where you are on the web to somewhere else. For example, it may connect you to another website or to a person's email address etc. When you click on a menu and it performs a function, you have clicked a link.
JPEG
Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. One of the main image formats for use on the web. Photographs are normally best stored as JPEG images for use on the web. (GIF and PNG files are other similar formats, which also allow for transparent backgrounds, which JPEGs don't).
Open Source Software
Software that is distributed for free and other people are allowed to modify or add to it.
RSS
RSS is a system to deliver regular information (e.g. newsletters or blog postings) to subscribers without using email. Their chosen RSS feeds are collected (or ‘aggregated') by their browser, a web-based RSS aggregator page, or an RSS ‘feed reader' or ‘aggregator') on their own computer.
Screen Resolution
Screen resolution is the chosen setting for width and height of a computer screen, defined in pixels. Each pixel is one dot - the smallest bit of information that a screen can display. Nowadays, the most popular setting for monitors is 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Creating and improving a website so that it will rank high in the search engines and help potential customers or clients find the website. Our sites are created with SEO in mind in that they have SEO friendly URLs, make use of the right 'meta tags' and have site maps that submitted to search engines like Google. That's just the start though. If you're really serius about optimizing your church website for search engines then there is a whole lot more you can do, the biggest of these is utilising 'keywords' in your site.
Sitemaps and XML sitemaps
A sitemap lists all the pages of a website, usually subdivided into subject areas or menus. It can help users locate a page quickly. Some people (including those with visual disability) may prefer to scan a sitemap to get a sense of the site contents. A sitemap also helps search engines to spider though all the pages of a site, because it provides a clear path to all pages within two levels of the homepage. Sites can also provide an XML sitemap. These are not for site visitors to read, but make it easy for search engines to spider the site and allocate priority to different pages. Our sites come with a sitmap as standard.
Spambot
Automatic software which spammers use to search thousands of websites for email addresses or insecure email forms. Any web-page ‘contact form' which does not contain powerful anti-hacking coding, can be hijacked by these bots, not only to send spam to you, but also to other people unknown to you. Our sites come with a contact form where your e-mail address is 'hidden' (using PHP language).
Splash Page
An introductory entry page to a website, usually containing a fixed or animated picture, with an ‘Enter site' link, which takes users to the 'actual' homepage. Although these can look nice (sometimes), research shows that users find them very irritating as they want to get any relevant information without any unnecessary delay.
URL
Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. An URL is the unique address of a web-page. When referring to your website homepage, it may be the same as the domain name, i.e. www.yoursite.com. Other URLs for pages on your site will include the file name for the specific page, for instance www.yoursite.com/howtofindus.html.
Webmaster
A person who manages a website, normally on the content and technical side of things.
Web Server
A computer permanently connected to the Internet which normally hosts many websites. When a visitor on a site requests a page then the web server that hosts that site sends it to them.
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