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Glossary of terms

This glossary covers commonly-used terms used in relation to websites and web content. These terms are categorised as follows:

Contensis CMS

 Term Description
CMS Content Management System
Navigator The Navigator area provides a visual breakdown of project content using its tree menu structure. By utilising the Navigator you can locate, access, create, edit or delete pages and content or view/edit folder properties.
Dashboard The Dashboard is the first thing you see when you login to Contensis (if you remembered to log out previously). This shows a Project Summary covering publishing queues, template types, project status, content usage, your recent activities and a to do list. It also shows any items that are checked out by you.
Toolbar When we refer to the Toolbar in Contensis, this is the main toolbar above the Navigator with links to the Image Editor, Reports etc.
WIP Work in progress ─ the CMS publishes to this area so that you can preview pages before they go live.
WYSIWYG Editor This is the What You See Is What You Get Editor. This is where you will enter your content in the edit mode of a page.

 

Common web terms

Term  Description
Alias Another name for a path/URL (eg you could have /chinesestudies as /cs).
Anchor A link that can be selected to connect to another page or resource.
Apache The most common web server (or HTTP server) software on the internet.
Blog A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger."
Browser A program that allows a user to find, view, hear, and interact with material on the world wide web. Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer are examples of popular browsers.
Client A computer that has access to services over a computer network.
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 that the browser software is expected to save and to send back to the server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the server.

CSS

(Cascading Style Sheet)
A standard for specifying the appearance of text and other elements. CSS is typically used to provide a single "library" of styles that are used over and over.
Domain Name The unique name that identifies an internet site.
Extranet An intranet that is accessible to computers that are not physically part of a companys' own private network, but that is not accessible to the general public.
Fire Wall A combination of hardware and software that separates a network into two or more parts for security purposes.

FTP

(File Transfer Protocol)
A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same colour. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.

GIF

(Graphic Interchange Format)
A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same colour. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.
Host Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network.

HTML

(HyperText Markup Language)
The coding language used to create hypertext documents for use on the world wide web.

HTTP

(HyperText Transfer Protocol)
The protocol for moving hypertextfiles across the internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program (such as Apache) on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the world wide web.
Intranet A private network inside a company or organisation that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use.

IP Number

(Internet Protocol Number)
A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, eg 165.113.245.2. Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP number.

ISP

(Internet Service Provider)
An institution that provides access to the internet in some form (eg AOL, BT).
JavaScript JavaScript is a programming language that is mostly used in web pages, usually to add features that make the web page more interactive. When JavaScript is included in an HTML file it relies upon the browser to interpret the JavaScript

JPEG

(Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG is most commonly mentioned as a format for image files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.
Linux Widely used Open Source Unix-like operating system.
Meta Tag A specific kind of HTML tag that contains information not normally displayed to the user. Meta tags contain information about the page itself ("meta" means "about this subject").
Redirect To channel a path/URL to a new location.

SEO

(Search Engine Optimisation)
The practice of designing web pages so that they rank as high as possible in search results from search engines (eg Google).
Server A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers.

SQL

(Structured Query Language)
A specialised language for sending queries to databases.
Unix A computer operating. Unix is designed to be used by many people at the same time and has TCP/IP built-in. It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet.

URL

(Universal Resource Locator)
The address of a webpage on the world wide web.
Web page A single hypertext document written in HTML.

WWW

(World Wide Web)
A client-server information system that uses the internet to access computers containing millions of hypertext documents.

XHTML

(eXtensible HyperText Markup Language)
A widely used system for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system to define complex documents and data structures such as news feeds.

XML

(eXtensible Markup Language)
A widely used system for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system to define complex documents and data structures such as news feeds.

Web Team - Marketing, Communications and Recruitment

The University of Nottingham
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Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 84 67476
email: web-team@nottingham.ac.uk