10 Web Terms Decoded

BROWSER

Let’s start with something easy! Browsers: Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox. Basically the application you use to access the Internet. There are lots of different ones. You may recognize some (or all!) of the below:

SERVER

A server is a computer that can be accessed from other computers that are connected to the Internet.

All websites are stored on servers. When someone tries to access a website, their browser will find the server the website is on and display it in the browser.

HOSTING

Hosting is a service provided by hosting companies such as GoDaddy, 123-Reg and even us!  They offer different hosting packages depending on your needs. They will host all of your website files, images and videos on web servers for you, so people can access your website from anywhere.

DOMAIN NAME

The domain name is another name for a website address or URL, these are simply the address people can use to access your website. For example, ours is epixmedia.co.uk. If we’re being picky, a domain name comprises of the domain (epixmedia) and an extension (.co.uk).

CACHE

When you visit a website for the first time, your browser will save pieces of the site so it can load it faster next time you access it. This is called the cache. Sometimes when changes are made to a website, your browser won’t automatically pick the changes up. So you’ll often hear us say “have you cleared your cache?”. Clearing your cache is quick and easy to do. It varies by browser, but usually pressing the control and f5 keys on your keyboard at the same time will at least force it to update itself.

CMS

A CMS, or a Content Management System, is an application that lets you change the page content of your website in a friendly way, without having to write any code.

The most popular CMS is WordPress. We use WordPress here at Epix as it is a brilliant tool that allows our clients to post new blogs, edit text and images, add new pages and generally do lots of wonderful website stuff in a very easy way!

PLUGIN

A plugin is a third party piece of code that will give your website additional functionality, such as making a contact form, creating an image gallery or making an video pop out of the page. WordPress also has plugins, but these are designed to integrate seamlessly with WordPress specifically.

Click here to read about Zoe’s 3 favourite WordPress plugins.

RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN

Responsive web design is the approach of building websites so they look amazing on all devices, from mobile to widescreen monitors. It will scale and rearrange the elements of the space to fit that user’s device, no matter what the screen size is.

With more and more users accessing the web on a mobile device, responsive web design is a must have.

SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of optimising your website so that Google, Bing and other search engines find it and give it a high rating in search results.

SEO is made up of many factors, from ensuring your content is relevant and updated regularly to making sure your page loads quickly.

BOUNCE RATE

Every website we build has Google Analytics installed. Google Analytics will give you heaps of metric like the number of visitors to your website, what pages are being viewed and lots more. Bounce rate is one of these metric and refers to the percentage of people who accessed your website but left without doing anything. A high bounce rate is not good because it means people didn’t find what they were looking for or they couldn’t find it easily so they went elsewhere.

This insight into what your customers are doing on your website is great for informing how you can make it a more effective sales and marketing tool.

These are 10 of the most common terms we thought you might find useful when navigating the world of web development. If you’d like to see any other terms explained, or have a web project you’d like to discuss (we promise to keep techno-babble to a minimum)  get in touch on Twitter @EpixMedia or via our contact page.