Common Webmaster Terms and Definitions

Splash Page
This is an intro page on a site's main page that either consists of nothing but an enter button or some ill concieved graphic rich flash intro that one has to sit through before one can actually visit the content of a site. Splash pages just waste time.

Meta Redirect
This is a type of redirect done via meta tags. Upon initial entry to a page a meta redirect will send you to another page or site. Meta Redirects are frequently used to route one to advertising pages or to route one to another site after the old site is no more.

Meta Refresh
This is a way of locking a visit into a site by making their back button not work. A meta refresh will automatically refresh the page a person is on when one tries to leave the site by pressing the back button. This makes it not possible to leave the site in this usual manner. The only way to leave a meta refresh site is to type in another url directly or go under your internet browser selecting view and then goto and selecting the previous page you were on. Sometimes by pressing the back button very rapidly you can get away too. Meta refreshes are not popular with internet users.

Java Redirect
This is similar to a meta redirect except it it done via javascript. In essence upon visit to a given webpage the user is instantly redirected to another page.

Meta Tags
These are code snippets that are used either for keywords which are displayed on a few search engines or to refresh the page via meta refresh and prevent an internet user from being able to use their back button to leave a site.

Title Tag
This is the piece of code that determines a page's title in many search engine results and the title seen by internet users when they visit a given page.

Font
This is the term for the type of text style used on a webpage. A larger font or smaller font would also mean to use smaller or larger versions of a given font.

Frames and Noframes
Frames are a way to create a website such that certain elements remain visible at all time. In essence you can combine multiple page elements together which remain on every page a person visits via frames to in theory create a more user friendly site experience. In reality frames make it harder for internet users to bookmark the exact webpage they want and hinder search engine indexability of a webpage. No frames is the use of traditional html webpages that allow the exact html page to be bookmarked. Many sites that use frames have a frame or no frame option because a lot of people hate frames.

Favicon.ico
A file that modern Internet Explorer browsers look for when a user bookmarks a site. The ico extension is for a graphic format known as icon, and if one has a favico.ico file set up the graphic will appear next to the webpage title in a user's Internet Explorer bookmarks. You can see how many Internet Explorer users are bookmarking a given site based on the requests for favico.ico rather the site has the file set up or not. This term is sometimes referred to simply as favico.

Java
A type of computer language sometimes used on webpages to allow for interactivity. Short snippets of java are javascripts.

Javascript
A type of script found on webpages that allows things like popups, popunders, and interactive elements on a webpage.

GIF
A graphic format first made popular by Compuserve. GIF stands for graphic interlaced format. GIF is not nearly as compressed of an image format as JPEG but it works well for graphics with few colors such as found in web icons and buttons.

Jpg or Jpeg
A very popular compressed image format that is often used for photographs or images with many colors. JPEG stands for Joint Picture Expert Group.

BMP or Bitmap
An uncompressed graphic format that is utilized for high quality image work for photography and desktop publishing. Bitmaps take up far more hardrive space than Jpegs and are usually not appropriate for inclusion on websites.

PDF File
A text file format invented by the Adobe graphic publishing company. PDF format allows a text brochere or document to be presented in the exact same format as it was when in printed form. Including links to PDF formats exclusively on a website is not a good idea though as not everyone has a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat.

Cookie
A small file placed on internet user's hardrives after visiting websites or after viewing ads from some online adnetworks. The purpose of a cookie it to keep track of user preferences, limit exposure of intrusive type ads, or keep track of login and password information for certain sites.

Html
Acronym for Hypertext Markup Language which is the dominant file format in use on webpages today. Html is the page itself so if one views www.ebay.com.com/index.html then this webpage would be an html webpage.

Hyperlink or Link
Term for an embedded html code that allows an internet user to go from webpage to webpage and website to website. Hyperlinks are often used as underlined blue text that changes color after the hyperlink is clicked. A graphic can be a hyperlink to another webpage as well.

Default Page
Term for the page that is presented when one types in something like domain.com without indicating a given html to view. Usually the file saved as index.htm or index.html are the default pages presented under such a situation.

Attribute
Contains additional information about an element.

Browser
A program that runs on your local computer that can access and display HTML pages.

Cell Padding
The space between the border of a cell and the data inside it.

Cell Spacing
The space between the outer border of two adjacent cells.

ColSpan
Colspan, or column-spanning, is a cell that stretches horizontally across several columns, or even the whole width of a table.

Comments
A way to add your own notes or explanations to a document. Comment sections are not processed and do not appear as part of the displayed document.

Content
The second attribute in a meta tag; it describes the data or information stored in the meta tag. Also, the term content is often used to describe the information presented in a web page as opposed to the mark-up or code used to control the presentation.

Delimiter
Marks the beginning or end of a tag or a data field. In HTML the opening delimiter of an element or tag is the less than symbol, <, and the closing delimiter is greater than symbol, >.

DIV
Short for DIVISION, a block-level element, like P, but completely definable by the designer via Style Sheets. The DIV element also lends itself to scripting (via JavaScript) and to absolute or relative positioning (via CSS and the DOM).

Document Object Model
An approach that treats your document as a collection of individually addressable objects, rather than a single solid unit. This gives developers programmatic access to the components to enable dynamic display of web page contents. The W3C DOM is a set of rules for doing this in a standard way within a web browser.

Element
A component of a document. Each use of the element in the document is noted by the use of the elements tag. For example, <p> might mark the beginning of a paragraph element.

HTTP-Equiv
The first attribute in a meta tag. It describes what this meta tags role is. The first attribute can be either this tag, or the name tag. Use the Http-Equiv tag is you are creating data that you want a server to process. The value you enter after Http-Equiv is an action the server will perform.

Hyperlink
Text or an image that perform a specific function. When the reader clicks on the hyper linked text or graphics, the appropriate action happens.Hypertext is text that links to other information, such as another web page, or another section of the same web page.

Name
Attribute in an HTML element (such as the META element or a FORM element) that provides a unique identifier for the element. However, in recent versions of HTML, the name attribute has been deprecated in favor of the 'id' attribute in most cases.

&nbsp;
HTML entity that refers to non-breaking space. If it is used in place of a regular space character in a line of text, the web browsers will not break a line at that point. The entity is also often used to add spacing to web page content for design purposes since it doesn't display, but the browsers will still allow space for it.

Nowrap
An attribute in html that tells the browser not to break a line.

Refresh
A meta element attribute that automatically refreshes your page after a specified number of seconds.

Rowspan
Attribute of tables that allow multiple rows within one column to be treated as a single cell.

Rules
Lines or dividers between elements in a web page. The element renders a horizontal rule in a page. You can also present vertical rules through the use of graphic images.

Target
The window or frame which will display the requested web page or results output. The default target is the same window the request is made from. Target is an attribute of an anchor element.
Value
The data you assign to an attribute. For example, the value for the align attribute is "center": <p align="center">