Web-speak: A glossary of terms

Web people talk in a language only eggheads can understand, and yet the fact is you are spending your money on what they recommend.  Here's a quick list of things you may hear us and other web folks talk about.

content management system

A content mamagement system, or cms, is a web site that controls a web site. A cms makes it possible for non-web savvy users to make changes to their web site without the help of a designer or code programmer. GeneratorTools is our cms, and you can check out the features and benefits by clicking here.

search engine optimization

Once you have a good site up and running, you have to get found on search engines. Tweaking your site's content, organization and invisible code to get the highest possible search results is called Search Engine Optimization. Here's how it works.

Search companies like Google have an army of computers that crawl through every web site's code and content in an effort to best match searchers with content they appear to be looking for. In large part, Google looks for something called meta information, which is data that is not viewable by the user that tells Google what keywords should be displayed to searchers. Through GeneratorTools' simple interface, you have the power to enter and update meta information into every web page at your site, 24/7/365, ensuring that when someone is looking for you, they will find you.

Get more info on GeneratorTools' search engine optimization tools by clicking here.

site map

A site map is a graphic representation of the navigational organization of a web site. Usually, site maps contain boxes with labels representing the content that will be contained on that page and "underneath" that page in the site map. Developing an accurate site map is an essential "first step" of web design, so that everyone on the team knows how the site will hold all of the information available, and how it will be found by the user. Click on the image to the right to view an enlargement of our sample site map.

Adobe Flash®

Flash is a software program that is marketed by graphics powerhouse Adobe that gives us the opportunity to add motion to our clients' web site. The program puts images, video and audio on a timeline — like a movie — and can even include links to pages on the web. One of the great things about Flash is that nearly all web browsers can see Flash, so you don't have to download any special softare to use it.

There are two major downfalls with Flash. First, Flash is (currently) invisible to search engines like Google, so if you use Flash for your main navigation, your Google rankings will almost certainly fall through the floor. Second, Flash cannot be updated through a standard HTML-driven content management system, so you have to go back to the Flash designer every time you want to make a change to the movie.

HTML

HTML is shorthand for Hyper-Text Markup Language. HTML is, at its most basic level, nothing more than common text that tells a browser how to display certain types of information, including text, images and multimedia. The power of HTML resides in the simple text page link, which connects one page to another in a completely non-linear fashion. That makes it possible for billions of web pages to be accessible to each other with almost no programming knowledge whatsoever. HTML was actually originally created by the United States military, to be used as a communication tool in the event of nuclear war.

Image optimization

Internet connections are slow. Even high speed connections like DSL and cable have dramatic limitations on how quickly internet data can flow through the lines and through your computer to your browser. Therefore, it is imperative that all images that appear in web pages be optimized for the web. In simple terms, optimized images have been made as small as possible, so that they will move quickly through the pipeline and still look reasonably close to the original, high resolution image.

Images can be optimized by using an image editing program like Photoshop®. Adobe® markets a stripped down version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements® that contains all of the basic features of its parent program, but at a fraction of the cost. You may learn more about Photoshop Elements by clicking here.

widgets

A widget is a tiny software program that runs on its own at a web site, that performs a very specific task. As a response to the complexity of software design, coupled with the incredible demand for new software, widgets have filled a gap in the web design marketplace. Most widgets are free if you know where to find them, and many can be customized to fit your site's look and feel. One of our favorite widgets is called Blidget, which feeds the text from a public blog directly to your web site. For an example of how we've used Blidget, click here.

Ad words®

When you look at a standard Google® search page, there is info on the left and on the right. The left hand column are the organic results of your search, and appear for free to both you and the linked company. The right hand column is paid advertising, and the ads are appearing because the keywords you've entered match the keywords for those ads. The advertiser pays nothing for placing those ads until you choose to click on one of them. That, in essense, is Google AdWords.