Bloglossary

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 Network – A company that works with multiple advertisers to place advertisements on multiple publisher sites. Usually serves banner ads.
• Affiliate Marketing – The process of promoting products on your website or blog where, if the products (or other products on the site) are purchased, you receive a percentage commission.
• Akismet – The leading WordPress spam prevention plugin. Akismet comes pre-installed with the latest versions of WordPress.
• Alt Text (Alternative Text) – The browser-readable description of an image. By default, WordPress adds the Title of your image as the Alt Text.
• API Key (Application Programming Interface key) – An API is a way for two applications to talk to each other. API keys allow one app to talk to the other without sharing username and password data.
• Apache – A web server software that is used to help run the PHP code that powers WordPress.
• Avatar – A photo used to represent a person’s identity. The most common service for avatars is Gravatar, which WordPress natively supports in comments.

B

• Backup – A copy of your data to be used in the event of loss or hacking. Learn how to back up your WordPress site with VaultPress.
• Balance Sheet – A financial statement showing the assets, liabilities, and capital of a company.
• Bandwidth – The amount of data that can be transferred from one point to another (from your computer to your internet service provider, or from your server to your website visitor, via their internet service provider).
• Banner Advertising – An ad graphic that appears on your website, either delivered via an Ad Network or directly sold by you to an advertiser.
• Bit.ly – A commonly-used URL shortener. Provides the ability to use a custom domain for shortening.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A lower bounce rate is better.

C

• Caching – The process of storing data for quick access. In WordPress terms, caching stores a static copy of your blog’s HTML, instead of performing new PHP calls each time a user visits your website.
• Categories – A default WordPress post classification system. A way to group specific posts together to form sections of your blog.
• CDN (Content Delivery Network) – A network of servers that holds copies of your images, CSS files, and webpages, and deliver them to users based upon their location.
• CMS (Content Management System) – A piece of software that allows for the entering and organization of data. WordPress is an example of a CMS.
• Commission – A percentage of a sale. In advertising terms, the amount you earn from your affiliate marketing.
• Conversion Rate – The percentage of customers who performed an action you specify as success (for example, the number of customers who purchase a product or click a banner ad).
• Copyright – The legal right of ownership of a specific body of work. For example, a photographer owns the copyright to an image they photographed; an author owns the copyright to a blog post that they have written.
• cPanel – A control panel that allows you to manage your server.
• CPC – In advertising, this is the cost per click on an ad. For the publisher, this is also known as RPC (revenue per click).
• CPM – In advertising, this is the cost per thousand impressions of an ad. For the publisher, this is also known as RPM (revenue per thousand impressions).
• Creative Commons – Shorthand for the content made available on the web for legal sharing and use. Can be licensed with or without attribution (crediting of the copyright holder).
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – Language that defines the look and feel of the HTML elements of your website.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate) – In percentage terms, the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of impressions of an ad.

D

• Dashboard – The first screen you see when you log into the administrative side of your WordPress blog, giving you an at-a-glance overview of what’s happening with your site and giving you access to create, edit and publish content among other functions.
• Div Tag – A div tag is a section of a webpage. CSS selectors can be applied to each div tag.
• DNS (Domain Name Servers) – Akin to an Internet phone book, DNS maintain a directory of domain names translated into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
• Domain Name – A unique name that identifies a website, essentially acting as it’s address on the Internet.
• Dropbox – A cloud-based file storage service that allows users to save, store, share and transfer large quantities of files between multiple computers.

E

• Email – Short for electronic mail, email is a means of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients.
• Evernote – A cloud-based note-taking and file-storage application that synchronizes data across multiple device

F

• Facebook – One of the largest social networking sites, allowing users to create profiles, add friends, join common interest groups and business owners to create fan pages to promote their products and/or services.
• Feed – See RSS.
• Feed Reader – A service that aggregates many RSS Feeds. Popular feed readers include Bloglovin’, Feedly, and Flipboard, among others.
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – The method used to transfer files between your computer and server, or between two servers. Learn more.

G

• Geotargeting – The practice of delivering different content to users based on their geographic location.
• Gmail – A widely used, free email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well as via POP3 or IMAP4 protocols.
• Goo.gl – A URL shortener service from Google that allows users to create abbreviated, easy to share URLs.
• Google Adsense – An ad network service from Google that allows publishers to serve advertisements, targeted to site content and audience.
• Google Analytics – A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Widely considered the industry standard for data tracking and reporting.
• Gravatar – An image or profile photo that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog.
• Gravity Forms – A robust and easy-to-use contact form plugin for WordPress.

H

• Hashtags – Used on some social media sites, a word or phrase preceded by a hash/pound sign (#) indicating discussion or commentary on a specific topic
• Hit – A request to a web server for a file. The number of hits on a web page is equivalent to the number of files requested, not to be confused with page views.
• Hootsuite – A social media management system that allows a user to manage multiple social media accounts on one interface using a streamlined dashboard.
• Hosting – The business of housing, serving, and maintaining files for one or multiple websites, allowing those sites to be accessed on the Internet.
• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) – A standardized system for tagging text files to display font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on websites.

I

• Impression – A single display of a banner ad on your website.
• Income Statement – A financial statement showing the income and expenses of a company.
• Instagram – A widely popular online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables users to take pictures and videos and share them with followers.
• IP Address (Internet Protocol Address) – A unique sequence of numbers, each separated by periods, that identifies each computer using the Internet Protocol to communicate over a network.
• ISP (Internet Service Provider) – A company that provides your access to the internet.

J

• JavaScript – An object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.
• Jetpack – A WordPress plug-in that connects a self-hosted WordPress site to WordPress.com to allow for access to a number of powerful features.
• JQuery – A simplified JavaScript library designed to make it much easier to use and implement JavaScript on any given website

K

• Keywords – A word or combinations of words that together represent the content of a specific website or web page. Commonly used as part of a search engine optimization strategy. See SEO.
• Klout – A website and app that uses social media analytics to rank users according to online social influence via the “Klout Score”, a numerical value between 1 and 100.

L

• Leaderboard – A wide rectangular banner advertising space that measures 728×90 pixels seen at the top of a website as the first/primary advertisement.
• Loop – A sequence of programmed instructions that is continually repeated until a certain goal is achieved.

M

• Malware – Malicious software created with the goal of damaging or disabling computers and computer systems.
• Media Kit – Promotional marketing materials compiled for the purpose of promoting your blog/brand to prospective sponsors/advertisers and clients
• Mobile – Refers to various handheld computing devices such as smart phones and tablets, and the technology that powers and supports such devices.
• MySQL – A popular choice of database for use in web applications, used for adding, accessing and managing database content.

N

• Navigation – The means by which users move between pages of a website, typically via a menu or sidebar containing links to various categories and content.
• Nofollow – A value that can be assigned to a link to signal to search engines that the hyperlink should not influence the ranking of the link’s target in the search engine’s index. Commonly required and used when linking within a sponsored post.

O

• Open Source – A classification of software where the author makes the original source code freely available to be redistributed, modified and expanded at will.
• Outbound Links – Links that link off your site to somewhere else on the Internet.

P

• Page View – A visit to a page on your website. If a reader reloads the page, it counts as an additional page view.
• Payment Gateway – An e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card payments for online businesses.
• Permalink – A permanent static hyperlink to a particular web page or blog entry.
• PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) – A widely-used open source general scripting language commonly used for web development that can be embedded into HTML.
• Pingbacks – An automatic notification sent when a link has been created to a person’s blog post from an external website, creating a reciprocal link to that website.
• Pinterest -An extremely popular social media website where users can save, sort, and share images known as pins through collections known as pinboards, which act as virtual inspiration boards.
• Plugins – A way to extend and add to the functionality that already exists in WordPress via custom features so site owner’s can tailor their site to their specific needs.
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click) – An advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.

Q

• Quantcast – A technology company that specializes in audience measurement and real-time advertising, offering public access to traffic and demographic data for millions of sites.

R

• Reach – The number of different people within a target group or target market that visit a site. A common measure is a site’s number of unique visitors.
• Responsive – Refers to web design with the goal of implementing a website with an optimal viewing experience across all devices including desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones.
• Robots.txt – A file at the root of your website that tells search engines which pages they are able to visit and index.
• ROI – Return on investment. The benefit resulting from a deployment of a resource.
• RPC – Revenue per click of an ad. See CPC.
• RPM – Revenue per thousand impressions of an ad. See CPM.
• RSS Feed (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) – A standard format used to syndicate latest blog posts, which can be read by a feed reader. RSS Feeds are automatically created by WordPress and can be found at www.yourblog.com/feed by default.

S

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Optimizing the content and structure of your website/blog for visibility in web search engines such as Google or Bing.
• Server – A server is a computer that stores and provides data to other computers, whether locally or across the Internet.
• Short link – See URL shortener.
• Snapchat – A video messaging application where users take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. Messages appear only for a limited length of time before disappearing.
• Social Media – A classification of website and/or mobile application that enables users to create and share multi-media content and/or to participate in social networking
• Spam – Flooding the Internet with many copies of the same irrelevant or inappropriate message in an attempt to force the message on people who have no interest in receiving the correspondence.
• Sponsored Post – A method of advertising whereby an advertiser pays a certain dollar amount for a blog post.

T

• Tags – A default WordPress post classification system. Tags group related posts together and make it easier for people to find your content. Similar to, but more specific than, categories.
• Taxonomies – A way to classify blog posts in WordPress. For example, a travel website might have taxonomies for destinations, traveler types, and seasons.
• Themes – WordPress themes hold the files that tell the browser what to display and how it should look.
• Trackbacks – An automatic notification sent when a link has been created to a person’s blog post from an external website, creating a reciprocal link to that website.
• Trademark – A symbol or word(s) established by use as representing a company, brand or product.
• Tumblr – A microblogging platform and social networking website that allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
• Twitter – An online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”.

U

• Unique Visitors – The number of unique people visiting your website or blog each period.
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – Website address.
• URL Shortener – A service which creates URLs that are shorter in length, and normally provides statistics for link clicks. Especially useful when sharing links on social media.

V

• VaultPress – A backup service for WordPress blogs from the creators of WordPress. Learn more.
• Viewport – Controls how a webpage is displayed on mobile. Must be defined in your WordPress theme header.
• Viral – A buzzword meaning “widely circulated”.
• VPN (Virtual Private Network) – A connection to a private network within the internet. Often used either 1) to mask your IP address to make a website believe you are coming from a different location or 2) to connect to a workplace’s private network.

W

• Widgets – WordPress widgets are small content areas that perform a specific action. Widgets usually appear in the sidebar or footer of your blog in areas that you define (known as “widgetized areas”).
• WordPress – A content management system and is the most widely used blogging software.
• WYSIWYG – “What you see is what you get”. Also known as the Visual Editor in WordPress.

X

• XML Sitemap – A list of the pages on your website that is submitted to search engines so that they have a complete index of your site.

Y

• YouTube – A social network based upon user-submitted video content.
• YSlow – A website that analyzes the speed of webpages.

Z

• z-Index – Specifies the order of overlay of elements. A higher z-index means the element will be on top, a lower z-index means the element will be on the bottom.