Online & Website Term Glossary

A way for businesses to distribute or sell web applications, SaaS is centrally hosted on an online server and can be accessed via web browser. Examples include Google, MailChimp, and Dropbox.

Any web form or input area such as comments are susceptible to spam entering a site. For example, spammers can automatically input data into a ‘contact’ web form. Deleting this spam content can be time-consuming. There are many ways to prevent spam, though none are foolproof. Common tools include Drupal’s “HoneyPot” module and adding “Captcha” to forms that require users to spell out letters or numbers.

A data file that is added to a web server to ensure a secure connection and allow browsers to use an HTTPS protocol. 

This refers to content that has been added via a WYSIWYG web page editor into a paragraph type container. The content, including images and text are bunched together in one container. This reduces the ability of the content to respond well on different mobile devices. It also makes it harder to display content in multiple places.

Schema or Structured Data pertains to a specific vocabulary of tags that can be added to a website's HTML to help search engines better understand your webpages as well as improve the way these pages are displayed on SERPs.

Learn more on schema.org's website.

A document outlining the design specifications of an organization, including fonts, color palettes, and appropriate logo use cases. This guide allows marketers to conform their material to match the branding and voice of the organization they're representing.

A domain used to identify a category that is smaller than a regular domain. Typically a subdomain lived under the main domain of a website.

This is the characteristics that make up the people who you feel with directly want to interact with your company through your products and services. 

It can take the form of age group, gender, race/ethnicity, income level, buying habits, interests, hobbies and more. 

This refers to how content is classified such as categories and sub-categories of content. The larger the website the greater the need for classifying content. For example, a website that has recipes will have different categories for appetizers, soups, entrees, salads etc.

Takeaway

The more well thought out the taxonomy is the easier it will be to build and use a website.

What it is: An enterprise-level content management system.

Type: Fee-based licensed software

Features: TeamSite manages, stores and analyzes web pages, documents, databases, source codes, and scripts.

Pros: TeamSite's digital marketing system makes for large corporations to more efficiently market through e-commerce, email marketing, and rich media management.

Cons: Being an enterprise level CMS, TeamSite will cost more then some businesses can handle.

All about TeamSite here.

A template file manages and displays multiple pages. This allows for making changes easily to many pages. The different components of a template file include the display of specific content types as well as a unique design. The template design is also called a "theme" in Drupal. Unlike print design, where each page in a brochure can have a different layout and still take the same amount of time to print, the more web templates there are, the more time it will take to develop the site. The advantages of a Template include: More efficient code and less time to code a site resulting in a less expensive website, easier maintenance of a website since changes can be made globally, improved usability since it’s easier to view pages that have common layouts and navigation schemes, easier display of content from a database and more efficient integration with Responsive Web Designs (mobile friendly).

Takeaway

Try to identify how many Templates you think your site will need e.g. Home page, Blog overview, multimedia gallery etc. The fewer templates needed, the less time and cost there will be to build the site.

TLD or Top Level Domain would be .com in the following example URL - www.example.com. 

Topic clusters revolve around a specific topic. A pillar page is first created that covers all aspects on that topic. Then, supporting articles are created to go in-depth on specific aspects of the topic and link back to the pillar page. 

In the end, you have all your content sorted by topic with one general overview and many in-depth articles to support the overview.

Topic clusters are an important SEO tactic for increasing search visibility for target keywords.

A unique web address that allows you to disguise your content with a branded URL. Tracker domains are used by Pardot (a SalesForce marketing platform), and are also known as Canonical name (CNAME) or vanity URLs.

Information included in URLs that allow advertisers to track marketing campaign effectiveness. It records data of users who came to or interacted with a website from a specific location due to an ad or social campaign.

A subset of analytics focused on the users at the "top" of your funnel - i.e. users without much knowledge of your company and the services it provides.

A business framework that considers social, environmental and financial performance. TBL is derived from an accounting term for the “bottom line,” which is the financial profit or loss in an organization, usually found on the very bottom line on a revenue reports.

This refers to how a user experiences the site. Usability has a substantial effect on the success of a website. A site with simple, quality and credible material has great usability, and the user will notice. Also, equally as important, many search engines look at usability when ranking websites, and they will rank your page accordingly. 

The overall design of a web page and site, and how the user will experience it.

This term refers to the layout of a page or rather where a user interacts with a software application or Internet browser. Often referred to as a GUI or graphical user interface. The User Interface or UI is a subset of the overall User Experience design which includes how people interact with a series of pages, a whole website, or web application.

Tags that are appended to the end of a URL for tracking purposes. Examples include medium, source, campaign, term, and content.

Vignette is now under OpenText.

A term used to describe the process of collecting customer feedback and utilizing it to improve their experience.

This stands for the World Wide Web Consortium which is the international governing body for the web. Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the W3C, is also one of the original inventors of the World Wide Web.

Takeaway

Keep in mind there are web standards much of which relate to accessibility and some developers are better than others writing code that complies with standards.

This refers to a Project Management process whereby each phase follows another until the completion of a project, specifically first Define, then Design, Develop, and Deploy. It is considered a more practical, less time-consuming process than Agile but also limits the amount of creativity and ability to make substantive changes during the course of the project.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are recommendations for making web content accessible for people with disabilities. Government websites (Federal, State, Municipal) are required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) section 508 statute to meet certain accessibility standards and the WCAG defines those standards. The WCAG are published by the Web Accessibility Initiative which is a part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG 2.0 was released in 2008. The present standard is 2.1 and 2.2 is slated to be released in the fall of 2022.

Hosting is the business of storing website information on an online server. More importantly than the space provided, is the fast website loading speed due to the server. Buying one server for a personal website usually would be too expensive, but using a web hosting service enables companies to share the cost of fast loading speed.

Search engines use spiders to crawl linked pages of a website to index them and determine their rankings in regards to search terms.

Theming is the process of turning a Photoshop design and a Drupal back-end into a fully functioning web page. The first step involves structuring HTML through Drupal's views, blocks, and panels modules into valid HTML that can then be styled. Next, CSS - in our case, Sass and Compass - is written to transform the very basic looking HTML page into a fully responsive web page, matching the design perfectly. JavaScript is written to add interactivity, such as sliding and filtering results without the page having to reload. Theming usually includes extensive QA (quality assurance) so that the end result is compatible with any modern device that can view a web page.

Webinar stands for web seminar. Virtual seminars give users the flexibility to be in their home or place of work and still be present to learn new things and hear about the latest trends in their industry. It allows for a greater audience and cheaper cost compared to in-person seminars while also leading to increased engagement from users.