Tip #1909 - Web Design: the Basics (acronyms)
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Web
Design Workshop: The Basics
Let's
go over some basic definitions.
I'm
sure you've come across words and acronyms on the Internet whose meanings
you don't know. 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 underlined 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
– 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
– File Transfer Protocol. When your site is complete, this is what you
will use to 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 specifically
geared to computer and Internet definitions.
~ Kim
Ganues
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