A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

ad clicks: When a visitor uses an advertisement link to go to another website.

ad inventory: The number of ads a website or publication can sell in a given period.

ad views (or impressions): When a visitor pulls an advertisement's image from the server, it is assumed they saw it and have the opportunity to visit the advertiser's website by clicking on the link. One person looking at one ad.

ActiveX A programming language supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer which works a lot like Java. ActiveX is more invasive than Java, and can transmit computer viruses. If you use Explorer, turn off ActiveX.

AIM: AOL Instant Messenger.

affiliate program: An advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to the advertiser's website. This eliminates the necessity for the advertiser to find websites with related content to list their banners. It also increases the response rate by giving the "affiliate" websites a stake in the response rate. Affiliate programs are a great plan for the websites offering them, but the websites that participate often become underpaid sales representatives.

authentication: Technique which allows access to certain webpages only by offering a username and password. This process shows that the person entering the pages is an authorized user.

autoresponder: A program which will respond to your email immediately with a pre-designed response. They're great for confirmation messages, but be careful not to rely on them too heavily.

B

bandwidth: How many bits are transferred between the server and its visitors. The more (and bigger) graphics and downloadable files you offer on your website, the more bandwidth your site will take, increasing the time visitors must spend on your website, and the amount of resources your host must spend on you. Taking up too much bandwidth may drive visitors away or force your host to charge you more to support your website.

beacon pages: A webpage created to increase search engine rankings by increasing the number of "related" pages linking to your main website. They take advantage of search engines' new emphasis on pages that have many links from related websites in determining relevance to a search term. They are Doorway Pages with a different address.

BCC: Blind carbon copy. This is a field in your email program that will send a copy of your message to a person without the primary recipient knowing. The email address of the BCC recipient will not appear on the resulting email, and any replies to the message will not be sent to them.

browser: A program used to find and interpret HTML documents on the internet. The most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape, in that order.

C

campaign: The advertising and promotion done during a given period of time.

catch-all: A program that allows any email sent to your domain to go to a particular email address. That allows any email sent to a misspelled or unused username will still get to a person who can deal with them.

CGI script: A program, often written in the PERL programming language, written to run on any computer. They add value to a website by doing any number of cute things. For example, a CGI script can send a visitor to a "thank you" page when they submit a form. They normally go in a separate folder from your HTML files.

click through rate: The percentage of users who click on a viewed advertisement. It shows how effective the ad is, when compared to the average rate of the media.

client: The browser used by a visitor to a website.

client errors: An error occurring due to a bad request by the visitor's browser, such as typing in a page name that doesn't exist. Client errors will show error numbers in the 400 range in your log analysis program.

.com: Suffix indicating a commercial domain.

cookies: These aren't the kind your Grandma used to make! Web cookies are files containing information about visitors to a website, like username, password, and what they want to buy. It is stored on the visitor's computer, and sent back to the website that created it when the visitor comes back or gets to the order page. Cookies can also retrieve information like monitor resolution and platform to webmasters who intend to use this information to improve their website.

counter: A script which counts the number of times your page is requested by visitors. Remember that a visitor which visits your page more than once will be counted every time.

CPA: Cost per action for banner ads. This is the best type of rate to pay for banner advertisements, and the worst type of rate to charge. Advertisers only pay for the visitors who click on their banner and then sign up, fill out a form, or purchase something on their website. This is most common for Affiliate Programs. My opinion is this type of payment arrangement is already an endangered species, and will soon become extinct.

CPC: Cost per click through for banner ads. The advertiser only pays when a visitor clicks on their banner (whether or not the visitor waits for their page to load before leaving). Look for this type of rate when you plan to place a banner on a website with related content.

CPM: Cost per thousand (impressions or subscribers). CPM is a marketing term you will see often when researching banner and magazine ad rates. It helps you determine how much you are spending per person viewing your ad, and the company by allowing them to charge more as their subscriber base or hit count increases without changing their posted ad rates. If you are planning to offer advertising, this is the way to do it.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. They let you assign the look of different elements of each webpage in your website. They're an HTML 4.0 feature, so older browsers may not support them.

D

DBMS: DataBase Management System.

demographics: The types of people looking at a given advertising medium. (For example: 25-30 year old males making $50,000-$100,000 per year, with blond hair and green eyes.)

digest: An email message containing several postings to a mailing list. Lists often inundate members with postings, and digests help people with less time keep up.

directory: A list of websites, usually organized by category. Many directories are searchable, but they are different from search engines because they just list your home page. They don't spider your site, so any hidden descriptions or keywords will not count toward the relevancy of your page in any given search.

discussion list: A group of people discussing a particular topic by email.

DNS: Domain Name Server. A program which automatically translates domain names into their correct IP addresses.

domain: An area on the internet assigned to a particular company. Each area is assigned its own numeric IP address and a text name. If one server has more than one, they are considered "virtual" domains.

domain name: The text name assigned to a website. A domain name example would be www.texaseldersolutions.com.

doorway pages: A webpage designed to rank well on a specific search engine for a specific keyword phrase. These pages usually rely on frequent repetition of the keyword phrase, and often try to "trick" search engines into ranking them well.

download: The transfer of information from the internet to your computer. The information could be a webpage, email, or a program. Downloading things can be dangerous, so be sure to use Protection before engaging in intercourse with other computers. (In other words, if you're going to be on the internet, get a good virus protection program.)

DSL: Digital Subscriber Line. A method of connecting to the internet permanently via a high-bandwidth phone line. They're faster than dial-up service, and you can be on the phone and the internet at the same time without purchasing an additional phone line. They're also more expensive and temperamental than phone lines.

E

E-Commerce: The ability to sell goods and services over the internet. To enable your website to sell goods and services, you need a merchant account (to process credit cards), a secure server for your form, and (if you have more than one product) a shopping cart program to "remember" what your customers want to purchase. If you anticipate a large volume of purchases, you may need a separate company to provide real-time processing of your credit card transactions.

email: Electronic mail. A wonderful, free marketing tool and a great way to keep in touch with friends, family, business associates, and website visitors. If you don't have an email address, what are you waiting for? Your internet service provider should give you one, your web host should give you one if you have your own domain, and you can get them for free on the world wide web or by using Juno.

email address: The first part of an email address is the username, which identifies the person you want to contact. The @ symbol is after the username, and before the host name. The host name identifies the computer or email service the person uses. A three letter suffix is added (separated with a dot) after the host name. The most common suffixes are: .com (commercial), .net (network), .org (non-profit organization), .edu (educational), .gov (government), and .mil (military). Any two letter suffixes after the three letter suffix identify a country: .us (United States), .uk (United Kingdom), .de (Germany), .ca (Canada), .se (Sweden), etc. The host name and country suffix are unnecessary if your information is the same. (If you use AT&T Worldcom and so does your best friend, you can address email to just her username, and if you live in the United States, you'll never see a .us suffix.)

encryption: A program that scrambles and unscrambles data on a network, so personal information located there is unintelligible to unauthorized people. Even if a website's form data is encrypted, if it is sent via email it becomes accessible to anyone. If you are setting up E-Commerce on your website, be sure to store your customers' data on a secure server.

Ethernet: The most common method of networking computers in a local area network, since it can be used with any kind of computer. It also provides fast connections and (if the network has a direct connection to the internet), can provide fast and constant connections to the internet. Most University of California campuses now offer Ethernet connections to their students in the dorms for free - all they need is an Ethernet card in their computer!

ezine: An electronic magazine, often sent via email and/or posted on a website. These "magazines" are usually short, and are often free. I strongly suggest signing up for free ezines in your field and starting one of your own as a marketing tool. Signing up for your competitor's ezine helps you keep up to date with what they're doing, and can give you ideas for your website.

F

FAQ: Internet abbreviation of "frequently asked questions."

flame: To send an angry or malicious comment to a newsgroup, chat room, bulletin board, or via email. Doing so is considered bad, so if an online comment makes you angry, don't send your response until you've cooled down a bit! Derived words include: flaming, flamer, and flame war (which is basically a nasty online argumentt).

forms: A set of HTML commands which allows the author to control information sent to them by visitors. Forms can make it easier for visitors to give feedback because the author does all the work. All the visitor has to do is answer the author's questions. (Other times, forms aren't any easier to fill out than an email screen, and the tiny input areas make it more frustrating.)

FTP: "File Transfer Protocol." This computer language allows you to get files from and send files to any type of computer over the internet. Under most circumstances, your browser works very well for transferring files between computers, but when you have your own website, it's helpful to have a specialized program to update it.

FYI: Internet abbreviation for "for your information."

G

G: Email and newsgroup abbreviation for a grin.

gif: A type of graphic understood by all graphic browsers. They were introduced by Compuserve back when graphic browsers were young. Now, they are the most flexible graphic format, allowing transparent backgrounds and animation.

gopher: A menu-driven interface for the internet. This system is now obsolete; it was almost entirely replaced by the world wide web four years ago, when I first encountered it.

.gov: A suffix indicating a government domain.

GUI: Graphical User Interface. A program that uses icons rather than commands. Windows uses GUI; Unix and DOS use command-line interfaces.

H

hallway pages: Most search engines which scour the internet for new webpages to add to their database give better rankings to pages they "found" than pages that were submitted on the "Add URL" page. Hallway pages are basically a list of links to all the pages in a website that the designer wants indexed by search engines. By submitting the Hallway page, rather than the index page, the website is likely to be indexed faster, more completely, and get better rankings.

hidden input tags: Form tags which visitors will not see when visiting your site. Some search engines index them. For example: <input type="hidden" name="Description" value="Your page description here.">

hits: Hits are simply requests for files from visitors. Each HTML document and graphic file counts as a separate hit, so they aren't an accurate representation of the number of different visitors to your site, but sometimes they're all you've got.

home page: The main or entrance page to a website. The page visitors are sent to when they type in your URL without adding a specific page name. Home pages are usually named index.html, home.html, or default.html. (I recommend index.html, since all hosts support that name.)

host: Your internet service provider host is the computer you connect to for internet access. Your website host is the computer where your website files are located, which allows visitors access from the internet.

HTML: "HyperText Markup Language." HTML is a simple programming language everyone uses to author their webpage. (Programs which claim to avoid the necessity of learning it translate your document into HTML.)

http: Hypertext transport protocol. The language used to move web pages across the world wide web.

hypertext: A term used to describe associative writing, as opposed to linear (narrative) writing. People follow links in the text to read it their way, rather than how the author wrote it. Web pages are hypertext, and so are many CD-ROMs and computerized help systems.

I

IMHO: Email and newsgroup abbreviation of "in my humble opinion." IMO & IMNSHO are variations that aren't humble.

Iming: Instant Messaging, or chatting on-line.

insertion order (IO): The contract between an ad buyer and the ad seller.

.int: A suffix indicating an international domain. (I've never seen it, but WebTrends assures me it exists.)

Interstitial: A web advertisement that appears on its own page. They aren't clickable, so they've lost popularity since introduced. When a visitor clicked on a link, the ad would appear briefly before the page they wanted.

IO: Insertion Order. It is a binding contract on one piece of paper that outlines the ad sale you are making. It must be signed by your ad client.

IOW: Email and newsgroup abbreviation of "in other words."

IP address: The internet protocol address identifying a computer connected to the internet. Every computer (including yours) is assigned one when they log onto the internet. Servers always use the same IP address, but if you get internet access through a large dial-up internet service provider, you may be assigned a new IP address every time you log on to the internet.

IRC: Internet Relay Chat. A system which lets you join real-time text conversations over the internet.

ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network. A digital alternative to phone lines for connecting to the internet. Like DSL, it's faster than analog modems, more expensive, and allows you to talk on the phone and be on the internet at the same time without additional phone lines. I think DSL made ISDN obsolete by being faster and cheaper.

IRL: Chat and newsgroup abbreviation of "in real life."

ISP: Internet Service Provider. These are the companies who supply internet access to people who don't have their own servers. It is best to find one which is fast, reliable, and inexpensive. If you travel often, choose a national provider whom you can access from anywhere you're likely to go. If you are overwhelmed by choices, ask your friends if they like their service or visit a website which compares the services in your area.

J

Java: An object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. It's smaller and more versatile than C++, the popular programming language it's based on. It's useful for programming web applications, because it will run on any computer platform - Macintosh, UNIX, Windows, or DOS.

JavaScript: A scripting language developed by Netscape and Sun Microsystems that is loosely related to Java. JavaScript code can be included in a webpage along with HTML and is easier to write than Java. It is not a true programming language, though, and has limited functionality. In order for visitors to see the JavaScript on your site, they must have a browser that supports it, such as Netscape.

JK: Email and newsgroup abbreviation of "just kidding."

JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group (also JPG). A graphic file format which stores images in a compressed form. They aren't as small or versatile as GIFs, but they offer better resolution, and are especially useful for photographs you want to display on the web or send via email.

K

kbps: Kilobits per second - the standard measurement of modem speed.

key phrases: Phrases you want associated with your website in search engines. Most people search for combinations of words rather than single words, and writing your list of keywords grouped into phrases can give you a search advantage.

keywords: The words which best characterize your business and website. If you include them in the text of your website, search engines will associate them with your site, and return your site in searches for them.

keyword weight: The number of a particular keyword in your document divided by the total number of words. Calculate it by copying the text of your website into your favorite word processor. Count the words, and count the keywords by using the Find/Replace option. Replace all your keywords with themselves, and the program will tell you how many there were.

knowbie: A person who understands the finer details of computer networking.

knowbot: An artificially intelligent computer program that automates the search for information on the internet.

KWIM: Chat room abbreviation for "Know what I mean?"

L

listserv: The email server managing a discussion list.

LOL: Email and newsgroup abbreviation of "laugh out loud."

log: The record your website server keeps of who visits you, when, and which pages they visited. Make sure your website host makes these available, and then check them. A log record can show you how many pages each visitor is looking at, and differentiates requests for pages from requests for graphics.

lurk: To read messages in a newsgroup or chat area without participating in the discussion.

M

mail bomb: An email message sent with the intent to crash the recipient's mail server or mail reader. On many systems, this can result in the cancellation of the bomber's account. A person can unintentionally crash their message recipient's mail server or mail reader by attaching files that are too large or that are not supported by the recipient's mail server. So, don't send files that require browser attachments, and if you have to send a large file, you may want to zip it first!

mail filter: A program that allows you to sort email before viewing it using the subject, the sender's email address, or even information in the body of the message. Eudora and Pegasus both have mail filtering options.

mailing list: A list of email addresses compiled under an alias in an email program like Eudora. It allows you to send messages (like newsletters or announcements) to the entire group of people without using blind carbon copies (BCC:) or having every email address appear on the recipients' copies.

marquee: A horizontally scrolling text message. Usually done with Javascript.

meta tag: An HTML tag which is not visible when the document is viewed. It is placed within the head tag to tell search engines the description you would like them to use in their database, and the keywords you want your page associated with.

MIME: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. The standard format for sending non-text email attachments, like photos, sound, video, or software.

mirror sites: An exact copy of a website. They're often used for overloaded web and FTP sites, when the server can't take it anymore.

.mil: A suffix indicating a military domain.

MLM: Multi-Level Marketing. These are the pyramid schemes your teachers warned you about in school. They promise you'll make money with almost no effort. Don't believe them, and don't advertise where they do.

modem: MOdulator, DEModulator. A device either inside or connected to your computer which allows you to connect to the internet.

MPEG: Motion Picture Experts Group. The standard format for digital video and audio compression. (AKA MP3)

N

.net: A suffix indicating a network domain. (Often used as an alternative to .com.)

netiquette: Internet etiquette. The rules of behavior for interacting with others over email, newsgroups, discussion lists, discussion boards, and chats. This includes restraining yourself when you feel like writing angry comments ("flaming") and sending unsolicited email or posting blatant advertisements ("spam").

netizens: People who frequent the world wide web, newsgroups, and discussion lists. They understand how everything works and what all these words and abbreviations mean.

newbie: A person just learning the ropes of the internet.

news bots: Computer programs that customize portal sites with the information you're most interested in and sends you customized email with the latest updates depending on the way you answer a few questions. They're the simplest bots.

O

opt-in: The people subscribed to a mailing list have asked to receive the information or advertising. (Double Op-In means the person requesting information must confirm their desire to receive it by responding to an email message after subscribing.)

opt-out: The people subscribed to a mailing list have not asked to receive the email (it's SPAM), but they have the option of removing their name from the list if they wish. Removing your name from an Opt-Out list often has the undesirable effect of getting your name and email address on even more lists!

.org: A suffix indicating a non-profit organization domain.

P

page views: A measure of the number of times an HTML file was requested from the server. Unlike hits, image files aren't counted. Unlike unique visitors or users, one person visiting the same page multiple times may be counted.

PERL: Practical Extraction and Report Language. The most common (and simple) language used on the internet to add interactivity to a website, such as the processing of form data.

permission marketing: Using Opt-In lists to send advertising material.

pixels: A unit of picture measurement. One pixel is about the size of a period (.) in 12 point font. Web banners and other graphics are measured in pixels. A standard banner size would be 468 pixels long and 60 pixels high (468 X 60). Monitor resolution is also measured in pixels. Right now, the most popular monitors display 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high (800 X 600).

platform: The operating system used to access the internet. Windows 98 and 95 are the most popular, but when you're designing your website, that doesn't mean you can ignore Macintosh, Sun, or Linux computers, which are used by significant portions of the internet community (unless your site's content is just for users of one particular platform, like "Windows 98 Annoyances").

portal: A website where visitors can find what they are looking for. Generally, a search engine or directory. A "vertical portal" specializes in one industry or target market. A "horizontal portal" tries to have something for everyone, like Yahoo! or Looksmart.

protocol: A set of rules for exchanging data over the internet. These rules allow computers with different operating systems to communicate with each other.

Q

query: The words or phrase visitors use to search a database, such as a search engine.

R

ranking: The placing your website gets when visitors conduct a search for your keywords or keyword phrases using a search engine. (The most "relevant" response would be the top ranking.)

reach: The amount of different types of people who see an ad or message, including a website. Popularity.

reciprocal link: A link you place on your webpage with the understanding that the linked webpage will create a link to your site.

referral page: A webpage which links to your website and sends traffic. The URL will appear in your website's server logs, or in The Counter's analysis of your traffic. A good referral page can be worth more than a good search engine ranking, since it is likely to last longer.

ROI: Return on investment. A marketing term pointing out that paying money to market yourself is worth it as long as you earn more money from the advertisement than you spent on it. Make an effort to measure your results from marketing efforts, so you can evaluate and improve them.

ROS: Run Of Site. An advertising package involving many ads on one website, where the website selling the space chooses where the ads appear.

ROTFL: Chat and newsgroup abbreviation of "rolling on the floor laughing."

S

search bots: Computer programs which will search a dozen search engines simultaneously. Used by meta search engines like Dogpile.

search engine: A cgi program which allows a visitor to search for words or phrases in a database of webpages. The creator adds to the database by sending a program called a "spider" to follow links in webpages.

search engine algorithm: The criteria a search engine uses to determine which websites match the words or phrases a visitor is searching for.

shopping bots: Computer programs that search commerce sites for the best deal. Also called roboshoppers, they'll find you the best deal on anything from cars to Palm Pilots.

side door pages: Doorway Pages created to rank well on several search engines for one or more keyword phrases. They provide valuable content to the visitor, often in the form of an article.

signature file: A small file you can create to add to the bottom of your email and newsgroup messages. Most email programs will allow you to create one fairly easily. For Netscape, create a file named .sig.txt in the default folder on your hard drive. Add your address, phone numbers, email address, URL, your company name, and/or a cute message. But keep it to four lines or less.

source code: The HTML and Java programming of a web document. Look in your browser under View Source Code to look at a page's code. If their page does something nifty you want to copy, cut and paste their source code into a word processing program and save it.

SOV: Share Of Voice. How large a percent of a given niche or population a web or email property reaches.

SPAM: Unsolicited email. This term encompasses everything from those annoying jokes your friends send you to the multi-level marketing schemes appearing in your email box every day.

spamdexing: Gathering email addresses from the internet to create a database. The database of email addresses is then either used to send unsolicited marketing messages or sold to somebody else for that purpose.

spider: A program which follows links through websites to add or update a database (usually for a search engine, but spamdexers have spiders too). They look at HTML code and add information their search engines will use to determine the page's relevance to keywords and phrases. They are text-based, and often can't follow frames.

stemming: The ability of search engines to associate words with prefixes and suffixes to their word stem. If you have "water" on your website, the search engines with this ability will also associate "watering" and "watered" with your page.

stock bots: Computer programs that will find stocks meeting your investment criteria. Consider them your completely impartial stock broker. You can program them to find companies you want to invest in, and alert you when a company's profile begins to drift away from your criteria.

T

TAFN: Chat and newsgroup abbreviation of "That's all for now." TTFN is the Tigger variation, "Ta-ta for now."

target audience: The people most likely to buy your product or service, or most interested in the information you provide. The more you know about them, and have designed your product or service with them in mind, the easier it will be to sell it to them.

TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. A language allowing different types of computers to communicate over a network. It's how computers talk over the internet, and sometimes even Local Area Networks.

telnet: A command-driven access to information on the internet. I recommend ignoring it unless your job requires you to use it or you already understand it. Like gopher, it was around before the world wide web, and is being replaced by simpler methods of accessing information.

THX: "Thanks."

TIA: Abbreviation for "Thanks in advance." I don't recommend you use it with your business email responses!

TPTB: Abbreviation for "The Powers That Be."

TTYL: Chat abbreviation for "Talk to you later." TLK2UL8R is a longer variation. They both mean exactly the same thing.

U

unique URL tagging: The practise of embedding uniquely identifying code into URLs in HTML content. This allows the website to identify visitors and how often they visit.

URL: "Uniform Resource Locator." Your website's address. (http://www.yoursite.com)

usenet: The newsgroup portion of the internet.

V

visitor: One person coming to your website. They may access one or many pages on your site, creating multiple hits. They may even come back with a different address. Visitors are what everyone wants, not hits. Count them carefully.

W

watermark: A background image that doesn't scroll along with the rest of the page.

web host: A company which keeps websites on their computers for public access. If you are paying for a company to host your website, make sure they provide redundant backups, fast and friendly support, access to your logs, and cgi script access and support.

webpage: One HTML document accessible form the world wide web. One page on a website.

website: A collection of webpages linked together on a single topic or for a single business accessible from the world wide web.

WFM: Internet abbreviation of "works for me."

WTG: Internet abbreviation of "way to go!"

WTGP?: Chat abbreviation of "Want to go private?"

WTHYTA: Chat abbreviation for "What the heck you talking about?"

WWW: World Wide Web, often called simply "the web." The most popular method of finding information on the internet. The World Wide Web is a collection of documents linked by HTML.

WYSIWYG: Abbreviation of "What you see is what you get," often used in regards to HTML editors. With a WYSIWYG editor, you don't have to learn HTML code in order to design your own website.

Z

zip: Zipping a file compresses the information to make the program smaller by actually deleting some common information. To use a file that has been zipped, you must "unzip" it. Windows 98 can automatically unzip files, but for other operating systems you may need to acquire a separate program in order to do so. (Check your computer for Microsoft Unzip, or visit Dave Central for a free utility.)