Tip #1749 - Basic Web Design Terms
Printer Friendly Version | E-Mail This Tip
WorldStart
Let's go
over some basics—definitions that is.
I'm sure
you've come across words and acronyms on the Internet that you don't know the
meaning to. You may even see them every day but find your eyes glazing over
with indifference to their definitions. If you plan on building your own website
then it would be helpful to know what some of this stuff means. For example,
do you know what the bold parts of the following web address stand for?
http:// www .worldstart. com
I'm not going
to get technical with the explanations. You just need the gist of it, otherwise
you may end up with the TMI Blues.
TMI
= Too Much Information ;-)
Okay, here
we go:
Internet
– a networking infrastructure (a really humongous infrastructure) where any
computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected
to the Internet.
WWW
– World Wide Web. Not the same as the Internet. It's the way to access the information
on the Internet. It's like your secret password decoder ring that allows you
to tap into the info on the Internet and interprets it into a format that you
understand
HTTP
– stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. It's an agreed upon method for formatting
and transmitting messages on the WWW
HTML
– Hyper Text Markup Language. It's the language used to build websites. Next
time you are on a website go to your browsers menu and choose View, then Source.
A window will open showing you the html that is used to put that site together.
It's not very exciting to look at unless you're a programmer and like that kind
of thing ;-)
FTP
– stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is what you will use when your site
is complete and you transfer your web pages to a server so they can be accessed
by the Internet.
Domain Extensions
that are available to the public:
.com
= commercial
Worldstart uses a .com extension ( http://www.worldstart.com
) because we are a commercial business
.net
= network
.org
= organization
.info
= information
.biz
= business
.name
= name
.pro
= professional
If you remember
from last week, I looked up the domain I wanted which was www.lilydog.com
and it was already taken. I chose to alter the name a bit and see what
else was available. However, I could have kept the ‘lilydog' and looked to see
if a different extension such as ‘lilydog.biz' or ‘lilydog.name' was a possibility.
The following
extensions are not available to the public. You have to be a part of that specific
institution in order to use its particular domain extension.
.gov
= government
.mil
= military
.edu
= education
.aero
= aerospace
.coop
= cooperatives
.museum
= museums
Hope this
clears some things up. Check out www.webopedia.com
if you want more specifics. It's a great online dictionary that is geared specifically
to computer and Internet definitions.
Until next
week,
~ Kim
Want To Comment On This Tip? Click Here! We'd love to hear from you :-)
Like These Tips? Get 'Em Free In Your E-mail
