I am excited to be designing and creating your custom WordPress site! Having built and/or worked on many many WordPress sites and custom extensions, the terminology and moving parts of a website are clear to me — but I know that’s rarely the case for clients.
It’s important that you learn some of the “web speak” lingo. This part might seem less exciting, but It is really important so that we can communicate better throughout the website project completion process. Knowing about the different parts of your website, what they are used for, and how you can best leverage them Is also going to help you run your business more efficiently and proficiently.
I know this can be a lot to take in, so rest assured you don’t have to remember everything and understand the details of how it all fits together — as that’s really my job. But some familiarity is important and you can always use this as a handy reference as you need to.
Website Terminology
Server: This refers to the physical computer where your website files are located. For busier sites you might have a “dedicated” server, but typically servers are “virtually segmented” in some way so that more than one website can live there.
Hosting: This refers to the hosting company that makes a server available to host your website files and typically offers other related services also such as email.
Platform: This generally refers to the core software platform on which your content is hosted. Sometimes this is referred to as a “CMS” or Content Management System. We specialize in using WordPress, mostly due to it’s flexibility in adding custom plugins (extensions) that can do just about anything.
Domain: This is the “address” through which users can find your website, for example “google.com”. It’s somewhat like a street address that points to your host, which then points it to your server files are. The “.com” part is the domain extension (of which there are many others available) and they are purchased (via a yearly rental fee) from a domain “registrar” – which is like an online address book.
Database: This is where the content and configuration of your website is stored. The information is all arranged in database “tables” so that it can be retrieved efficiently by the website platform on demand.
Plugins: When it comes to WordPress, plugins refer to extensions that customize the way your website operates. They consist of code that can do just about anything, from changing a single setting to fully fledged sub-platforms like a directory, forum or social network. And anything in between! There are free plugins, and also premium (paid) plugins. Some “freemium” plugins have both a free and a paid version.
Theme: A WordPress theme controls the look of how your content is presented. At a minimum, it contains both templates for the layout, and stylesheets for the styles. I’ll dive deeper into themes another time as they can be a little tricky and confusing.
Similar to plugins, there are free and paid themes, and some “freemium” themes have both versions available.
Posts and Pages: In WordPress lingo, Posts are typically article content of whatever length, usually organized into Categories. Pages on the other hand, are more static content that are used to present different areas of your website, be that your Homepage, About page, Members area etc. There are also “Custom Post Types” that can be optionally used to organize specific types of content separately, for example directory listings or events.
Editor: There are two main editors available in WordPress. The newer “Block Editor” (aka Gutenberg) and the Classic Editor (which uses TinyMCE.) We recommend staying with the Classic Editor for writing Posts as it’s easier to use and less buggy. And for Pages, we recommend using a Page Builder rather than Gutenberg for similar reasons.
Layout: You’re probably more familiar with a website layout than you realize. There is of course the header and footer areas. Surrounding those might be a themed background or background image. In between the headers and footers you have the “Content Area”, where the content of that particular page or post is displayed.
Menus: These are navigational sections that allow users to click through to the various pages and posts on your website. Typically the main navigation menu is in the header, with extra navigation in the footer. If you have a membership site, there might also be a secondary navigation menu in the header for member links.
Sidebars: These are page sections that allow you to more easily add dynamic content to your page. The most common example is a main sidebar inside the Content Area on Posts, to allow for navigating and finding other posts. Secondary sidebars might also be in the header and/or footer.
Widgets: A funny name, but in WordPress these are the different subsections that can be added to a “sidebar” area. Some common examples are Category Navigation and Recent Posts, but similar plugins, they can output many different things.
Blocks: These are “block sections” in the Block Editor (Gutenberg.) If you follow our recommendations, you probably won’t be using them, but it’s good to know what it meant my them anyway. They are very similar to “widgets”, but are usually more for content sections in the content area rather than in sidebars.
Page Builder: This is an extension that allow you to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to create the layout and add various different sections and elements into it. They are typically “drag-and-drop” and “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) so that you can preview the content as you are building it. Usually they are a separate plugin, but sometimes they are “baked in” to a theme, but this is best avoided.
Admin Area: When you are “logged in” to your website, there is a “backend” interface that allows you to add content and manage website configuration. As this is most typically this is used by the Administrator, it’s commonly referred to as the Admin Area. But it may also be used by other user roles.
Roles: Besides the Administrator (the user which has full access to change anything on the site) there is also allowance for Editor and Author roles, so that those users can publish content, but aren’t able to modify the website configuration. Sometimes you need users to be able to “sign up” to your website, and these are typically given the Subscriber role, with the least amount of user privileges.
Web Language Acronyms
HTML: HTML stands for “HyperText Markup Language”. It’s the basic format that a web browser reads and converts into a webpage display.
CSS: CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheet”. It’s an additional language that complements HTML markup to give it additional styling so that the browser knows how to display the content more accurately. It “cascades” because it can be overwritten at any “level” so that there can be both common and more specific styles.
PHP: PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessoi”. It’s a fully fledged server programming language to check different conditions and “spit out” the HTML for display. WordPress itself is mostly written in PHP.
Javascript: Javascript is the common scripting language used by browsers to handle dynamic content and events. It’s most often used to make a webpage interactive in some way. A good example is an “instant search” that doesn’t reload the entire page.
JQuery: JQuery is a “javascript framework” used by WordPress (and other platforms) that makes writing javascript easier. There are other javascript frameworks such as React, NextJS and Vue. In WordPress React is used for Gutenberg Blocks.
SQL: SQL stands for “Structured Query Language”. This is used for adding, altering and retrieving information from your website’s database. It’s typically accessed via PHP but also can be accessed separately via a MySQL client such as PHPMyAdmin.
FTP: FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol”. This is used to transfer and modify files on your server remotely, typically via an “FTP Client”, which is a remote file manager program that you can run on your desktop.
SSH: SSH stand for Secure Shell. It’s a remote command line allows more advanced users to manage other aspects of your server remotely, not just the file system.
SSL: SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It’s a security layer that encrypts network communication on either end so that it can’t be read by a middle party (since communication needs to happen over an internet network, a compromised “hub” could read unencrypted traffic.)
DNS: DNS stands for Domain Name Server. This is part of the domain “address book” system. When a user types your domain name, it points to your host’s “name server” which then directs the request to your website files for a response.
SEO: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It includes “on-site” optimization of keyword content and metadata. And “off-site” optimization such as backlinks (links to your website from other sites.
MVP: MVP stands for Minimal Viable Product. It represents the minimum stage at which you can launch and make sales. Often for budgetary reasons, it’s a useful goal to aim for this stage as a priority and add more features and content later.
USP: USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition. It’s a marketing term that helps you think about what is unique about your offer, or basically why customers and prospects would buy from you rather than someone else.
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