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Website Definitions

Banner ad

An ad placed on web sites that promote and link back to your web site. The majority of banner ads are formatted as GIF images, although many sites accept HTML banners as well. Standard banners measure 468 wide by 60 pixels high. Ads are charged at their rate of impressions, or amount of times the ad is viewed by web visitors, usually in groups of 1000.

Branding

A marketing concept used to create a greater awareness of your company’s services and its products. Companies that are interested in branding try to get as many web users as possible to view their banner ads and logos, with less concern for the number of clickthroughs to their web sites.

Background

The background is like a canvas on top of which characters and graphics are placed. Some monitors allow you to control the color or shading of the background. Also referred to as a Background Tile.

Browser

Short for Web browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In the 90’s Navigator ruled, but Microsoft IE has taken over most of the market share. Both of these are graphical browsers, which means that they can display graphics as well as text.

Bulletin board

An online forum for a threaded conversation. Users can browse through previously posted messages or add their own message. Often used as a community-building tool.

Campaign

Refers to the schedule in which a banner ad will run or fly.

CERN

European Laboratory for Particle Physics. The World Wide Web protocols were originally developed at CERN, and the Lab remains an important center for developing Internet standards.

CGI

Common Gateway Interface. A CGI script is a small program that results in an action based on the user’s input. Unlike HTML, CGI scripts require programming knowledge to write, but are necessary for any interaction between a visitor and the site.

Chat

Allows web surfers to “speak” to one another on a real-time basis. Generally, messages typed in can be viewed immediately. Like a bulletin board, chat is also considered to be another community building tool.

Clickthrough rate

The percentage of web visitors who actually click on a banner ad to get to a web site. Clickthrough rates vary from as low as 0.1% to 1% for Run of Network campaigns, to as high as 3% to 5% for more targeted campaigns.

Co-located server

When your site is hosted on a co-located server, an Internet service provider (ISP) provides high speed Internet access for a web server that you provide and set up. Generally, the ISP is responsible for making sure the connection is up, while you are responsible for making sure the site works.

Cookie

Web sites use browser-assigned cookies to collect user information and to deliver customized content.

Cost per click

Cost per clickthrough to your site.

CPM

Cost per thousand. Ads are charged at their rate of impressions, or amount of times the ad is viewed by web visitors, usually in groups of 1000.

Dedicated line

A type of telecommunications service where a high-speed open connection is maintained between two points. In the case of the Internet, a dedicated line can be used to provide an Internet connection to all employees in a large organization.

Dedicated server

When your site is hosted on a dedicated server, the Internet service provider (ISP) provides an NT or UNIX server and connects it to a high-speed Internet network. All you have to do is develop content for your site and install the necessary applications on the server.

Domain name

A domain name is a text-based address used to locate a specific set of web pages. Most for-profit businesses end their domain name with .com; non-profit organizations generally use the .org ending. On the Internet, domains are attached to an IP address. All devices sharing a common part of the IP address are said to be in the same domain. A domain name is SOMETHING.COM or NAME.SOMETHING

DPI

Dots Per Inch – a measurement for graphics and image files.

DSL

Digital Subscriber Line. A way of sending digital data over regular copper telephone lines. A DSL line is dedicated and fast. Speeds are about up to 3.2Mbps download and up to 1Mbps upstream.

Dynamic pages

Web pages that are automatically generated based on user input and activity.

File transfer protocol (FTP)

FTP software allows you to upload or download files from sites on the Internet.

Firewall

A way to insure that data on a web server or connected computer will not be available to anyone on the Internet. Firewalls block outsiders from accessing private information or altering your web site.

Flash

A bandwidth friendly and browser independent vector-graphic animation technology made by Macromedia. As long as different browsers are equipped with the necessary plug-ins, Flash animations will look the same. Flash allows for all kinds of interactive animation no possible with plain HTML or DHTML.

Font (aka Type-Face)

A design for a set of characters. A font is the combination of typeface and other qualities, such as size, pitch, and spacing.

Frames

A feature supported by most modern Web browsers than enables the Web author to divide the browser display area into two or more sections (frames). The contents of each frame are taken from a different Web page. Frames provide great flexibility in designing Web pages, but many designers avoid them because they are hard to index in search engines correctly.

Frame relay:

A type of high-speed Internet connection between and 56 Kbps to 1.544 Mbps, often used with wide-area networks (WAN).

GIF

Pronounced jiff or giff (hard g) stands for graphics interchange format, a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web. GIF supports color and various resolutions. It also includes data compression, making it especially effective for scanned photos.

Hexadecimal Colors

Code used in HTML documents to specify the color of text and backgrounds displayed in webenvironments such as Netscape. Example #FFFFFF is white in html> each 2 digit section is a rgb value. The first two are the red value, the second are the green, and the third set are blue. This allows thousands of colors to be created with the six digit hex value.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. HTML is the code used to write a web page. The language uses text commands to create a series of ‘tags’ that specify how information should appear on the web page.

HTTP

HyperText Transport Protocol. HTTP is the protocol used to access pages across the web.

HomePage (Home, Index)

The main page or Index page of a Web site. Typically, the home page serves as an index or table of contents to other documents stored at the site. The server that stores the pages of your web site, offered both by ISPs and by dedicated hosting companies.

Hosting (Web hosting)

A website must be on a computer that is connected to the internet, you pay a monthly fee to keep your web site up on a host.

HTML (HTM)

Short for HyperText Markup Language, the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web. HTML defines the structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes.

Impression

Another term for page view. The number of web users that view a particular page.

Internet

A worldwide network of interconnected computers. The Internet uses the TCP/IP protocol to send information between disparate systems.

Inventory

The number of banner ad impressions that are available during any period of time.

IP address

A string of numbers that is used to identify the location for your domain name on the web. The domain name system translates domain names into these addresses, which are represented by a series of numbers looking something like this: 123.123.23.2.

ISDN

A digital dial-up service that can be used for a high-speed Internet connection.

ISP

Internet Service Provider. ISPs offer connections to the Internet to businesses and home consumers. Some offer web hosting and site development services as well.

Java

A programming language developed for web sites. Java gives web sites the ability to create small interactive applications for visitors.

JPEG (JPG)

(“Jay – peg”) Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and pronounced jay-peg. JPEG is a lossy compression technique for color images. Although it can reduce files sizes to about 5% of their normal size, some detail is lost in the compression.

Key Word Campaign

A type of targeted campaign in banner advertising that allows you to buy key words that people search for. Key words target solely those users who have searched a particular topic using a key word that they typed in.

Leased Line

The fastest connection you can get, leased lines come in two configurations: T-1 and T-3. A T-1 line offers a data transfer rate of 1.5 million bits per second. (T-3 lines are significantly faster, at 45 million bits per second, and out of the price range of most businesses) Data is transferred over telephone wires. Leased lines aren’t limited to a T-1 connection, but this is the most common and what is usually meant by “leased line.”

Link (aka HREF aka Anchor)

In hypertext systems, such as the World Wide Web, a link is a reference to another document. Such links are sometimes called hot links because they take you to other document when you click on them. A link ususally leads to another URL or URI.

Menu (Navigation)

You can enter another area on a site by simply pointing and clicking on a menu item. This is a list of links on a website.

MouseOver

A JavaScript element that triggers a change on an item (usually a graphic) in a Web page when the mouse passes over it. The change usually signifies that the item is a link to related or additional information. Mouseovers are widely used in Navigation Bars, pop-up boxes, and/or form submissions.

POP

Point of presence. A physical location maintained by an Internet service provider to provide a local connection to the Internet.

Portal

Another term for search engine. A portal is basically an Internet hub that acts as a starting point for locating information on the web. Some examples of portals are Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, and InfoSeek.

Real-time credit card approval

With real-time credit card approval, buyers can submit their credit card information along with their order and find out online whether the order has been approved by the credit card company.

Resolution

Refers to the sharpness and clarity of an image or to the settings of a monitor. Most monitors run at 800×600 or 1024×768 DPI Resolution

Run of Channel (ROC)

A type of targeted banner ad campaign. Banner ads appear in a particular channel or section of the site. Many large search engines have multiple channels (i.e. education, science, business, etc.) in which you can run targeted banner ads.

Run of Network (RON)

The least targeted of banner ad campaigns. With RON, banners appear randomly throughout an entire web site.

Scrolling

To view consecutive lines of data on the display screen. The term scroll means that once the screen is full, each new line appears at the edge of the screen and all other lines move over one position. For example, when you scroll down, each new line appears at the bottom of the screen and all the other lines move up one row, so that the top line disappears. The term vertical scrolling refers to the ability to scroll up or down. Horizontal scrolling means that the data moves sideways. In theory, the display should move smoothly, as if it were a piece of paper being moved up, down, or sideways. In practice, however, scrolling is not always so smooth. The scrolling method of viewing documents does not recognize page boundaries. One advantage to scrolling, therefore, is that you can look at the end of one page and the beginning of the next page at the same time.

Secure pages

Pages that are encrypted to ensure privacy, used typically for forms where sensitive information, like a credit card number, is being relayed. You can tell if a page is secure by the web page location–you will see https: instead of the more familiar http: tag at the beginning of the address.

Shared hard drive

A type of web site hosting service that allots you a certain amount of hard drive space for your web site. Generally, you are given a folder into which you can upload your web pages and images. While setup is easy and this hosting method is relatively cheap, its functionality can be limited and you could outgrow it.

Splash Page

A page in a Web site that the user sees first before being given the option to continue to the main content of the site. Splash pages are used to promote a company, service or product or are used to inform the user of what kind of software or browser is necessary in order to view the rest of the site’s pages. Often a splash page will consist of animated graphics and sounds that entice the user into exploring the rest of the Web site. Some splash pages will bring the user to the main Web site automatically, and some require the user to click on a link that will load the main page.

Static pages

Web pages that consist only of HTML and images.

SubPage

Any of the inside pages of a website. The home page menu contains links into the sites subpages.

T1, T2, T3 lines

These dedicated lines are typically used by companies with substantial connection requirements. Dedicated lines carry enormous amounts of data per second, with T1 having the smallest capacity and T3 the largest. They can be used to connect a user to an Internet service provider (typically T1), or to connect an Internet service provider to other locations on the Internet (T2 and T3).

Table

Refers to data arranged in rows and columns. A spreadsheet, for example, is a table.

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol These two protocols were developed by the U.S. military to allow computers to talk to each other over long distance networks. IP is responsible for moving packets of data between nodes. TCP is responsible for verifying delivery from client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the Internet, and is built into every common modern operating system (including all flavors of Unix, the Mac OS, and the latest versions of Windows).

Telnet

Telnet is a powerful program that allows users to access another computer from a remote location and run commands and programs as if you were sitting at that remote computer.

URL

Depending on whom you talk to, stands for Uniform or Universal Resource Locator. Essentially, a web address that represents a particular web page on the Internet. You can recognize URLs by their prefix “http.”

Virtual domain name

A service offered by Internet web site hosting companies that allows you to utilize a domain name as your web site address. Companies that do not offer this will require that the hosting company’s domain name be part of your web site address.

Web site

A collection of web pages (or files) that are extensions of a particular domain name.

Window

An enclosed, rectangular area on a display screen. Most modern operating systems and applications have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that let you divide your display into several windows. Within each window, you can run a different program or display different data.