ANATOMY OF A WEBSITE
Webdesign Jargon for Digital Journalists

This quick-and-dirty glossary is designed to provide digital journalists with a quick overview of the basic components of a website. The underlying assumption, here, is that while the medium may not be the message, it inarguably shapes it. Thus, journalists working in the online medium need to have at least a general sense of what the moving parts of a website are called, and what they do.

Anchor: 1. The HTML tag used to define the start and/or destination of a hypertext link. 2. Also, a link that takes you a specific place on another document, or on the page you're already on.

Banner: Also referred to as a banner ad, a banner is typically a rectangular graphic advertisement, placed on a website either above, below or on the sides of the site's main content and linked to the advertiser's own site. Most banner ads have moving text or images.

Blog: Short for "weblog," a blog is a webpage that has short, frequent updates made to it. Similar to a Web journal or "what's new" page.

Button: A small rectangular graphic usually labeled with text to indicate its function. Buttons may be used to initiate or conclude a process. Small graphics that act as hyperlinks are also called buttons. Often, but not always, represented as a push button.

Content: The information on a website. Content can be news, games, reference material, movies, music, facts, opinion, catalogues or - anything. Because AOL saw the need for content, it merged with Time Warner, a major content provider, in January 2000.

Dialog boxes: Special windows that pop up to provide information or choices to the user. Some dialog boxes provide many buttons, pop-up menus, or other choices; others may just contain a text message with an "OK" button used to dismiss the dialog box.

Domain Name: A vital part of the URL. A unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain names must be registered to ensure they are all unique. The first word is usually a keyword or company name. The suffix (.com, .edu, .gov) denotes the type of site - commercial, educational or government, for example). Outside of the USA, the first suffix may differ. A domain name always leads to one specific server, and a server may host many domain names.

If you click your mouse on the arrows, you will be able to select a product or service. Drop-down menus are commonly used for website navigation.

Dynamic content (dynamic pages): Information on a website or webpage that changes often, usually whenever anyone visits the page. Example: any page of search results is dynamic, because it is created in response to the user's query. See STATIC content.

External Link: A link to a node outside a database. Meaning, in non-geekspeak: A link to a page somewhere else on the Web, outside the site in question, as opposed to an INTERNAL link. See INTERNAL link.

Footer: The text and images at the bottom of a Web document that provide information on author/institutional sponsor, revision date, copyright, comments form, and navigational links. Sometimes these links are buttons. The footer is often set off from the rest of the text on the page by a horizontal rule.

Frames: A technical feature that enables webdesigners to divide a browser window into several smaller, scrollable windows, each of which can load different HTML pages. Many webdesign experts advise against the use of frames, since they make for cluttered design and cannot be searched by some engines.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): Common Web-based graphics file format, often used for basic images and graphic elements in Web documents. Another kind of image file format is JPEG.

Home page (homepage, index page, welcome page, default page): 1. Main page of a website; the Web document that serves as a starting point or organizational center for a collection of Web documents. If you don't use a complete URL, you go to the home page by default. 2. In popular usage, a small, personal and non-commercial site. Many people say, "Have you seen my home page?," meaning: "Have you seen my website?"

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A standardized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents (and possibly other applications such as sound or motion), and formatting instructions for display on the screen. When you view a Webpage, you are looking at the product of this code working behind the scenes in conjunction with your browser. Browsers are programmed to interpret HTML for display. In other words, HTML "tags" tell your browser how to format text, what colors to display, and what's at the other end of a link, among other things. You can see HTML in Internet Explorer by selecting the View pull-down menu tab, then "Source."

HTTP: The "HTTP" is most URLS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a set of rules for identifying, sending, and receiving Web documents between clients and servers. Used for exchanging files (containing text, graphics, sound, and images) on the Web.

Hyperlink/link: The relationship between two anchors. Clicking on a hyperlink will download and display the destination document to which it is linked. Hyperlinks in Web documents appear as underlined text in blue (before the user has clicked them) or purple (after the user has clicked them).

Internal Link: A link to a node in the same database. Meaning, in non-geekspeak: A link to another page on the same site, as opposed to an EXTERNAL link. See EXTERNAL link.

Internet (loosely, the Net): The vast collection of interconnected networks that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60's and early 70's. Not to be confused with an "intranet," which is a private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but is only for internal use. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a self-contained network.

Interactive: A Webpage is interactive when it prompts a response from the user or when the user can in some way interact with it dynamically (i.e., by filling out a form, posting a comment, etc.).

Interstitials: An interstitial banner ad is an advertisement that appears in a separate pop-up browser window. The advantage to interstitial banners is that they can be large (in byte size) while still allowing the main page to load.

Masthead: A masthead is a graphic image placed on top of a webpage that tells end users what page they are on. Masthead images can contain photos, text, shapes, and/or image maps.

Mouseover: A popular special effect for web graphics, generally programmed in JavaScript, which changes color or animates a graphic image when you place your cursor over it. Mouseovers can also be used to trigger navigation changes and pop-up windows.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group): A compressed format that enables the user to store high-quality images in relatively small files. Similar to the GIF format, but higher in quality, the JPEG format is useful for information-rich images such as scanned photographs. Almost every full-color photograph on the Web is a jpeg.

Link: A relationship between two anchors, stored in the same or different database. See "Internal" and "External." Shortened version of the now somewhat out-of-date "hyperlink."

Link "Rot": Term used to describe the frustrating and frequent problem caused by the constant changing in URLs. A webpage or search tool offers a link and when you click on it, you get an error message (e.g., "File Not Found: 404") or a page saying the site has moved to a new URL. URLs change frequently because the documents are moved to new computers, the file structure on the computer is reorganized, or sites are discontinued. If there is no referring link to the new URL, there is little you can do but try to search for the same or an equivalent site from scratch.

Mouseover: A JavaScript element that triggers a change in a Webpage when the pointer passes over it---typically, a graphic change, such as making an image or hyperlink appear. The change usually signifies that the item is a link to related or additional information. Mouseovers are widely used in Navigation Bars, pop-up windows, and/or form submissions.

Navigate: To move around within a website by following links.

Navigation Bar (loosely, "nav"): A set of graphical icons or text hyperlinks---i.e., linked words or phrases---located at the top of a webpage; in vertical columns along the page's left or right margins; or at the bottom of the page, in the footer. By providing links to a site's sections, the navigation bar assists the user in navigating around the site.

Pop-up menus: Often used in dialog boxes to provide a list of mutually exclusive choices; a more compact choice than listing the items as radio buttons. Pop-up menus are indicated in both the Mac and Windows interfaces by rectangles with downward-pointing arrows.

Portal: A website that acts as a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web. A portal (A.K.A. gateway) enables users to search for sites on the Internet. Some major portals include Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.com. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals (also known as vortals, or vertical portals). Typically, a portal site has a catalog of websites, a search engine, or both. A portal site may also offer e-mail and other services to entice people to use that site as their main "point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web.

Pull-down menus: Menus that drop down from the menu bar at the top of the screen (Mac interface) or top of the window (Windows interface). Menu selection usually initiates some action directly. Menu items that open a dialog box for further information are indicated by placing an ellipsis after the item name (for example, "Print..." opens a dialog box that solicits further information before printing actually takes place). Dividers are used to logically group menu items, or may simply provide visual relief in long menus. Submenus (such as the "Modify" submenu shown at the left) are a means of multiplying the number of menu items available. However, multiple submenus, or triple-layered submenus require too much dexterity for most users and most interface guidelines discourage nested submenus.

Scrollbar (also known as "slider"): The button at the right margin of a page that enables the user to move up and down the page by clicking and dragging it.

Server/webserver: A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Servers "serve up" requests for webpages made by a computer's browser program like AOL, Internet Explorer, or Netscape. Also called HOST computer.

Site/website: This term is often used to mean "webpage," but there is a difference. A webpage is a single entity---one URL, one file that you might find on the Web. A "site," properly speaking, is a location or gathering or center for a bunch of related pages, all of which comprise that site, and are linked to its URL.

Source (page source, source code, document source): The hidden, HTML version of any webpage. When you're looking at a webpage, you can peek at the source by clicking "View" in the top menu bar, then choosing "source" or "page source."

Splash page (buffer page): A pretty page, full of enticing eye candy, that appears on-screen before the home page. Often loaded with images, motion graphics (such as Flash animations), and other examples of what webdesigners disparagingly call "dancing baloney," splashpages sometimes frustrate users with their long load times and seemingly irrelevant content, a truism acknowledged by the inevitable presence of a "Skip Intro" button on many splashpages. For that reason, many webdesign gurus advise against them.

Static Page: A webpage with content that does not change unless the Webmaster alters it. Each time a user visits a static page, they will see the same content. A static page is the opposite of a dynamically generated page.

Streaming media: "Streaming" describes multimedia content that is played as it is downloaded. RealAudio, RealVideo and QuickTime movies are examples of streaming media. Streaming is often confused with RealTime streaming. In RealTime streaming, the Internet is used as a direct broadcast medium for the live transmission of events such as sports coverage or radio broadcasts.

Thumbnail: Small versions of larger images, designed to load quickly. Typically, they are linked to larger images, so that users can click on them if they wish, but need not be slowed down while waiting for the full-size images to be loaded all at once.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The unique address of any Web document. The URL tells the browser where a file is and how to deal with it. The URL is like a path leading to a particular file on a particular website on a particular server. On your screen, the URL is displayed near the top of a webpage in the address bar.

There is a logic to the layout of a URL:

Visitors: People who look at your website on their computer screens.

Visits: The number of unique users who come to your website and go to several different pages. Visits are a better indicator of a website's "popularity" than hits.

Webdesigner: The person who designs the look and navigation system of a website.

Website: A home page and all locally associated links. A website is a collection of electronic pages generally formatted in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that can contain text, graphic images, and multimedia effects such as sound files, video and/or animation files, and other programming elements such as Java and JavaScript.

Webmaster (Webmistress, Webmaster, Webmistress): Within a company or other organization, the employee responsible for managing the website. Also: The person who creates and/or maintains a website. You can usually find the Webmaster's logo or e-mail link at the bottom of the site's home page.

World Wide Web: A client/server system that transmits hypertext documents over the Internet to provide access to many types of information (text, sound, images). Or: A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web. Also: The formal name for the Web. The 'www' in a URL stands for World Wide Web.

(Note: All of the above definitions are stealware, cobbled together from definitions in webdesign glossaries all over the Web, most notably at the UC Berkeley Library, the Motive Intert Glossary, and the PC Webopedia, as well as pages maintained by DiamondClear Technologies, Grantastic Designs, About.com, and the Editors' Webdesign Group.)