Jargon Buster!

General Terms

E-mail
Electronic Mail is the term used for written communications between Internet users. You can email virtually anyone with an Internet connection.
Mailing lists
These are e-mail lists that you subscribe to, when you do so you will be contactable by the person or organization that you subscribed to. Be vary wary when Choosing to add yourself to a mailing list.
Message boards
These are places where you can leave messages usually relating to the site that you are on. You can read the message that you sent almost straight away and you are able to read other peoples messages.
Forums
Very similar to message boards but with one vital difference. Forums tend to be very busy places and are used for contact between remote users...i.e A person uses your forum to send messages to another person or people that are signed up to use your forum, probably having very little, or nothing at all to do with your site. You have complete control over your forum, and usually can ban users, set language options (stop swearing etc) and appoint administrators.
Guestbook
Simplified version of a message board - Lets a site visitor leave comments about thier experience whilst visiting the site.
Server
Where web sites and pages are stored ready to be viewed on demand (when you click to go there) - There a millions of servers available these days!
Tags
These are commonly HTML Instructions in a web page to tell the browser what to do or display...and in some cases what not to display.
Meta Tag
These are optional HTML tags used for supplying information to servers and many other sources.

Things you may find on web sites

Forms
These are used for sending information via e-mail. They are typically used where specific types of information is required, such as an order form for products. They can have required fields that you must fill in, this would be something like an e-mail address. When filling out forms...make sure that send no private information unless the page is secure. You can check to see if a page is secure by looking at the bottom of the screen...there will be a padlock there which denotes the page is secure.
Shopping cart
Shopping carts are essential if you want to sell products over the Internet. They provide users with a means to add products to a virtual shopping basket, which the cart keeps track of whilst adding up the prices of items as it goes.
Counters
You will see these all the time on the Internet. They provide visitors an idea of how many people have visited a particular site. Are they useful?...Well, you will very rarely see them on a business site but will see them on personal sites quite a lot, so I would have to say that they are of no use. If you really want to know how many visitors you are getting, then this information is usually available through your host anyway. Hosts are businesses that provide web space for websites and businesses.
Polls
Ever increasing in popularity...these allow users to vote on anything that you set. Why have them?...Well it's all about interactivity, the more interest that you provide users with, the more users you will see!

Site Building/Tools and Codes

Code
Code is basically the language used to write web pages. HTML is the main code used everywhere on the Internet, another being Javascript...which is responsible for things such as text color changes when your mouse pointer passes a over a link. See 'Abbreviations' for a special section on codes.
Visitor Trackers
This is a piece of code inserted in to a web page that will look at at the viewer very closely. It will gather information such as which browser you are using, what your Internet address is and a whole lot more if it can. They are pretty harmless in the main so don't be worried.
Databases
You will be on many databases in your lifetime...even if you don't know it! They are used to store information about all kinds of things...but mainly about you. A good example of a database would be a telephone directory.
Style Sheets
Also known as CSS which is short for Cascading Style Sheet they are an ever increasing feature of modern web sites. As to what they do...here goes my best shot to make this simple...
Think of our solar system, the sun is the style sheet...the planets are web pages. Now .. if the sun gets hotter...all the planets do too, that's basically how a style sheet works...change one thing in the style sheet and it will make a global change to all the pages in a site!
Style sheets are very powerful tools for web designers, there is very little that you can't control with them. All our sites are designed using style sheets.
Pop-ups
Pop-ups are those annoying mini web pages that appear when you first enter a web site. They seem to be ever increasing in number and usually contain adverts that are even more annoying than the pop-up! I hope that explains them adequately ;-)

Codes

ASP
Active Server Pages are database driven and dynamic. HTML is Static, the difference being that ASP can change HTML without the intervention of a webmaster or designer, thus being more interactive.
Javascript
A scripting language to enable Web page authors to design interactive sites.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface is a standard script for running programmes on a web server from a web page.(The programme is not run on your pc like Javascript is)
PERL
Practical Extraction and Report Language is a script programming language used to process text.
PHP
One of the fastest growing codes on the Internet - It offers interactivity making it also one of the most useful codes available.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the most used language on the Internet. It is bound by the use of tags and is not a scripting language. Commonly HTML is utilised by the above scripting languages to create web pages.

Abreviations

HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol is the standard way (protocol) of exchanging information over the Internet.
WWW
World Wide Web...this is where you are now!
Browser
It's what you are using to view this page!
Browser Compatibility
There are different types of browser available, most of which interprate codes in differing ways. The trick is to write code that will look the same in as many types of browser as is possible.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol is the standard method for downloading and uploading files over the Internet.