We all tend to use words and phrases we are familiar with, it makes communication so much easier and in a technical context, it makes it more reliable too. Instead of talking round a subject in vague terms and perhaps misunderstanding, it helps to use some jargon you both understand. I try very hard to avoid jargon outside of the technical setting, but it is sometimes hard to remember what terms normal people know! Sometimes it is impossible not to use the very word that has a precise meaning, so to help you I have compiled a short dictionary of some of the more common terms you might come across.

Blog
This was originally just an on-line diary to log activity perhaps by a system administrator, ie a "web log", for the benefit of their users. It has grown into a whole new phenomenon which bloggers now use for posting their thoughts on anything and everything, personal, business, social and political to name but a few. Technorati was tracking 112 million blogs at the end of 2007.

Browser
Worth mentioning that the browser is what you are using to view this web site - or any web site for that matter. Most people use Internet Explorer, or IE, from Microsoft, but Mozilla's Firefox is gaining in popularity and it sometimes does make a difference which browser you are using if a web site isn't displaying correctly. Mac users of course have Safari.

CMS
A "Content Management System" enables non-technical people to maintain and update a web site. They exist in varying degrees of cost and capability, this site has been created using Drupal.

DNS
The "Domain Name System" takes the URL of a web site and looks up the IP address which is then used to locate a specific resource on the Internet. It's like a telephone directory if you want to think of it that way; you type in a name and it outputs their number.

Flash
Properly styled as Adobe Flash, this is a powerful and flexible program for displaying animation and even video on web pages. It has recently emerged as the platform of choice for advertising, and all those little boxes you see on so many web pages now with full-motion adverts are the result.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the basic code used to create web pages, it is used to lay content out on the screen as you see it, and format text, tables and other elements of the page.

IP Address
This is a four-part number that computers on the Internet use as addresses for each other. You see a domain name in the address part of your browser, but it looks up the IP address to find the real location of the web site. The IP address of your own computer is usually 192.0.0.1 for example.

ISP
An "Internet Service Provider" is the company providing you with access to the Internet, or any company hosting web sites or providing other services related to the infrastructure of the Internet. In other words, it is part of the Internet, not merely a company on the Internet with a web site. For example, Amazon sells books on the Internet, but that doesn't make them an ISP.

Mashup
An application on a web page that combines information from more than one source, to provide content that is not available from either on its own. A simple example would be a business web site using Google maps and its own data to show the locations of its offices around the country.

MySQL
A database used extensively on web-based applications.

PHP
This stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", where the PHP in that case stands for Personal Home Page. I hope that is clear. This is a scripting language that enables developers to use databases and other computer functions running on the web server to create interactive web sites as opposed to web sites comprised of static pages.

Podcast
A media file, usually audio although video is now possible, that can be downloaded and listened to, such as a short presentation or a segment from a radio show.

RSS
Stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and is a means of sharing information between web sites. A newspaper web site would have an RSS feed that other webmasters could add to their web sites and so display a stream of updated news stories on their own pages fed by the newspaper.

Server
The computer that stores the web sites you are visiting. They literally "serve" the files and data that you see on your browser.

URL
The "Uniform Resource Locator" is the proper name for a web site's address.

Web 2.0
This is more a concept than an actual product or technology, serving to distinguish the evolution of web sites from simple content to useful functionality. A good example would be the use of widgets to allow visitors to a site to work out some information they need rather than simply searching the site and reading pages.

Widget
These are little snippets of code that can be embedded into a web page to provide additional useful functionality on that site. A simple example would be the Dilbert cartoon on this site. Anybody can copy and use widgets and add them to their own sites.

Wiki
Usually a collaborative encyclopedia-like effort, although the software can be used for any database purpose. Wikipedia is the most famous example with the English-language version ranking in the top ten most visited sites on the Internet. There are 253 different language editions of Wikipedia although the English version is the largest with 2,339,000 articles and over 1 billion words.

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