Glossary

Alt Tag

An attribrute for the HTML <IMG> tag. This attribrute is used to describe an image if it is missing or if you hover the mouse over the image.

Analytic Software

Analytic software for a website is software that is track visitors to your website and additional stats used to judge proformance.

ASCII

(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) -- This is the de facto world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111, plus parity.

Bandwidth

The difference between the highest and lowest frequencies available for network signals. The term is also used to describe the rated throughput capacity of a given network medium or protocol. In short, bandwidth is a loose term used to describe the throughput capacity (measured in Kilobits or Megabits per second) of a specific circuit.

Baud

Unit of signaling speed equal to the number of discrete signal elements transmitted per second. Baud is synonymous with bits per second (bps). In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive per second. Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrier signal shifts value - for example a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300 = 1200 bits per second).

Bit

(Binary DigIT) -- A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits-per-second.

Bps

(Bits-Per-Second) -- A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 28.8 modem can move 28,800 bits per second.

Browser

Client software that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources. Examples include Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator, Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari and Opera.

Byte

A set of Bits that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being made.

Cookie

The most common meaning of 'Cookie' on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser. The Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browser's settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time. Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online 'shopping cart' information, user preferences, etc. When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular user's requests. Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if their 'expire time' has not been reached. Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA, but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them.

DNS: Domain Naming System

DNS stands for Domain Name System and is a distributed, replicated system which allows name servers to map domain names to an IP number. DNS is integral to the Internet in that it allows people to use hostnames (yahoo.com) rather than IP addresses (138.23.234.12) in web, e-mail, and other Internet protocols.

Domain Name

The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the domain names: 1001resources.com, ftp.1001resources.com, whatever.1001resources.com can all refer to the same machine, but each domain name can refer to no more than one machine. Usually, all of the machines on a given Network will have the same thing as the right-hand portion of their Domain Names in the examples above. It is also possible for a Domain Name to exist but not be connected to an actual machine. This is often done so that a group or business can have an Internet e-mail address without having to establish a real Internet site. In these cases, some real Internet machine must handle the mail on behalf of the listed Domain Name.

E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce. Refers to the general exchange of goods and services via the Internet.

Fire Wall

A combination of hardware and software that separates a LAN into two or more parts for security purposes.

FTP

(File Transfer Protocol) -- A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a special way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name anonymous, thus these sites are called anonymous FTP servers.

Gateway

The technical meaning is a hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols, for example Prodigy has a gateway that translates between its internal, proprietary e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another, sloppier meaning of gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system, e.g. AOL might be called a gateway to the Internet.

Hit

As used in reference to the World Wide Web, 'hit' means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 'hits' would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics. 'hits' are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. 'Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month.' Because each 'hit' can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.

Host

Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network. It is quite common to have one host machine provide several services, such as WWW and USENET.

Hosting

This term can be used to refer to the housing of a web site, e-mail or a domain.

HTML

(HyperText Markup Language) -- The coding language used to create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTML looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of text with codes that indicate how it should appear, additionally, in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or a word, is linked to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client Program, such as Netscape or Mosaic.

Hypertext

Generally, any text that contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed.

IP Number

(Internet Protocol Number) -- Sometimes called a dotted quad. A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g.165.113.245.2 Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number - if a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.

Keyword Spamming

Using unrelated keywords or using keywords too often in order to yeild better search engine results. This is considered cheating and will get you blacklisted from the search engine. Do Not Keyword Spam.

Kilobyte

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

Landing Page

A landing page is the first page that a visitor arrives at when entering your website. In the early days of the Internet this use to be the Home Page or Index Page. In more recent years search engines perform deep indexes which search each page of your website. Search engines are more accurate to providing relavant information by bringing searchers to pages that match what they are searching. This means that every page in your website is a potential landing page

Meta Description Tag

A HTML head tag used by search engines to descripbe a web page in a search engine result. This tag does not display on the webpage.

Meta Keyword Tag

A HTML head tag usedto list keywords relavant to a web page for proper ranking in a search engine result. This tag does not display on the webpage.

Megabyte

A million bytes. A thousand kilobytes.

Modem

(MOdulator, DEModulator) -- A device that you connect to your computer and to a phone line, that allows the computer to talk to other computers through the phone system. Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans.

MP3

(MPEG, audio layer 3) - Used for the compression of audio signals. Layer 3 uses perceptual audio coding and psychoacoustic compression to remove all redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal. The result is layer 3 shrinks the original sound data without sacrificing sound quality. MP3 are smaller so they can be easily transferred over the Internet.

Phishing

Sending an e-mail claiming to be a legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam a user into surrendering private information. The e-mail directs the user to visit a website where they are asked to update personal information. This information will ultimately be used for identity theft.

POP

(Point of Presence, also Post Office Protocol) -- A Point of Presence usually means a city or location where a network can be connected to, often with dial up phone lines. So if an Internet company says they will soon have a POP in Belgrade, it means that they will soon have a local phone number in Belgrade and/or a place where leased lines can connect to their network. A second meaning, Post Office Protocol refers to the way e-mail software such as Eudora gets mail from a mail server. When you obtain a SLIP, PPP, or shell account you almost always get a POP account with it, and it is this POP account that you tell your e-mail software to use to get your mail.

Register (Domain Name)

Since every domain is unique, registries have been set up to assign domains to individuals and organizations. When a domain is registered with the appropriate registry, that domain is assigned and becomes no longer available for anyone else to use. Typically, there are registration and renewal fees (local registry fees) associated with the right to use a domain. However, there are some TLDs that are provided at no charge.

Router

A special-purpose computer (or software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more networks. Routers spend all their time looking at the destination addresses of the packets passing through them and deciding which route to send them on.

Server

A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g.Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't getting out. A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.

SPAM

Spamming is the abuse of any electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages in bulk. While its definition usually extends to the sending of any unsolicited bulk electronic communication, some exclude from the definition of the term "spam" messages considered by the receiver (or even just the sender) to be targeted, non-commercial, or wanted. In the popular eye, the most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form of commercial advertising. However, over the short history of electronic media, people have spammed for many purposes other than the commercial, and in many media other than e-mail. Spammers have developed a variety of spamming techniques, which vary by media: e-mail spam, instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engines spam, spam in blogs, and mobile phone messaging spam. Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have effectively no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists. Because the barrier to entry is so low, the volume of unsolicited mail has produced other costs which are borne by the public (in terms of lost productivity and fraud) and by Internet service providers, which must add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in a number of jurisdictions.

Spoofing

Forging an e-mail header to make it appear that is came from somewhere or someone other than the actual source. In some jurisdictions, e-mail spoofing anyone other than yourself is illegal.

Terabyte

1024 gigabytes. See Also: Byte , Kilobyte

Title Tag

A HTML code tag that displays the title of the webpage in the title bar of the browser. This tag is offen used for as the clickable link in search engines results.

URL

(Uniform Resource Locator) -- The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this: http://www.1001resources.com or telnet://anywhere.you.want or news:new.newusers.questions etc. The most common way to use a URL is to enter into a WWW browser program, such as Netscape, or Lynx.

WWW

(World Wide Web) -- Two meanings - First, loosely used: the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP, telnet, USENET, WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files, etc. to be mixed together.

XML Sitemap

An text document written in XML code that is submitted to search enigines. The XML Sitemap tells search engines what pages are in the site and how important they are to the overall site along with the frequency of change of each page.

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