This installment defines the key terms used in our line of business. We believe it is a good idea to review the terms - hopefully you will be familiar with many of the terms. If not, that is ok too since we're here to help you. Please Contact Us if you have any questions.
A browser is a software program used for searching and viewing various kinds of Internet resources such as a web page. The most popular web browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape and Firefox.
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. For example: http://www.pcdevelopers.com. It is not necessary to have your own domain name to have a website. It is used by companies to allow their Internet Website Address to be easily remembered by web surfers (customers). They are generally recommended for any firm that will benefit from the ease of access and added prestige that your own domain name offers.
When you wish to purchase and obtain a domain name, you must register it with a domain name registrar such as Network Solutions. There is an annual fee for this service. Domain Name Registration is the single most important part of owning, hosting and creating a website.
The conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computers. Specifically, ecommerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, and the transfer of funds, through digital communications.
(Electronic Mail) -- Messages, usually text, but can include pictures and hyperlinks, sent from one person to another via computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of addresses (Mailing List).
Generally refers to any highlighted words or phrases in a hypertext document that allow you to "jump" to another section of the same document or to another document on the World Wide Web.
A way of presenting information in which text, sounds, images, and actions are linked together in a way that allows you to jump around between them in whatever order you choose. Hypertext usually refers to any text available on the World Wide Web that contains links to other documents.
An IP Address is an identifier for a computer (or device) on a TCP/IP network. All computers connected to the internet have a unique IP address. This can be thought of as the address to your computer on the internet similar to a phone number. The format of an IP address is a four numbers (from 0 to 255) separated by periods. For example, PC Developers' IP address is 66.226.14.211.
Codes put into the HTML document that does not appear when viewing the document. It is used to identify keywords to the search engines for your website. For example, if you sell flowers, your keywords could be something like:
Two or more computers connected to each other so they can share resources. The Internet is a "network of networks," whereby anyone from an individual at a home with a PC to a large corporate multi-department system can freely and easily exchange information.
A search engine is a type of software that creates indexes of databases or Internet sites based on the titles of files, key words, or the full text of files. The search engine has an interface that allows you to type what you're looking for into a blank field. It then gives you a list of the results of the search. When you use a search engine on the Web, the results are presented to you in hypertext, which means you can click on any item in the list to get the actual file. If the file you select doesn't have what you're looking for, you can use the Back button on your browser to return to the list of search results and try something else. The other nice feature about search engines on the web is that if you have a website or page of your own, you can register it. When you submit key information about your page or site, it gets added to the index. This is a very good (but often overlooked) way to get people to visit your site.
Search Engines often have an automated program that searches each site that is submitted to it, looking at its content. It searches for words and rates and categorizes the site for its search engine. It is called a 'Spider' as it crawls through the Web.
Each Search Engine has its way of organizing the websites that are in its database. The trick is to have your site turn up in the top 25 listed in a subject so that it will get seen and visited. The number of times a keyword is used (not too much, however, or it is considered spamming) is part of the equation, as well as many other things. Each search engine has its own set of rules and priorities.
A computer that handles requests for data, electronic mail, file transfers, and other network services from other computers (i.e. clients).
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) -- A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. SSL used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers. URL’s that begin with “https” indicate that an SSL connection will be used. SSL provides 3 important things: Privacy, Authentication, and Message Integrity. In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side’s software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side’s Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can de-crypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.
(Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) - This is the protocol or convention that computers use to communicate over the Internet.
A web page is a document created with HTML that is part of a group of hypertext documents or resources available on the World Wide Web. Collectively, these documents and resources form a website. Every Web page is identified by a unique URL.
A service provider which houses the actual pages of a website on a computer and provides website visitors access to the site's pages.
The exact definition for the World Wide Web (popularly known as the Web) varies, depending on whom you ask. Three common descriptions are:
You can think of the Web as a worldwide collection of text and multimedia files and other network services interconnected via a system of hypertext documents. HTTP (HyperText Transfer P rotocol) was created in 1990, at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, as a means for sharing scientific data internationally, instantly, and inexpensively. With hypertext a word or phrase can contain a link to other text. To achieve this they developed a programming language called HTML, which allows you to easily link you to other pages or network services on the Web.
If you encounter a page with a word that is highlighted in some way (usually in a different color and underlined), you can click on that word and "go to" the page or resource to which connects. Of course, you are not actually "going" anywhere when you do this, but rather, you are summoning the file or resource that the link points to. This non-linear, non-hierarchical method of accessing information was a breakthrough in information sharing and quickly became the major source of traffic on the Internet.
The basic elements of the World Wide Web are:
Step 4 - Domain Names
