ToastyNews.Net





Computer and Internet Glossary

Sunday 5 July 2009 @ 4:10 pm

Computers and everything related to it tend to have their own language, and sometimes the words make you confuse. Even if you don’t want to know all of them, it will come accross sooner or later. Here are some of the important and commonly used words.

Bandwidth.
Bandwidth is the amount of data, which is counted in bytes, that your website can send each second. It is also the amount of data that the visitor can receive from your website. If your website is hosted in a limited bandwidth or doesn’t have enough bandwidth, then the website will appear slowly.
For that reason, you should choose a web host that meets your needs, of course a good and complete service web host also comes with a higher price.

Browser.
Browser is a computer software that you use to visit a website.
There are several browser released by different vendors, such as Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome. Most of this browsers are distributed free of charge, you may download it from their official website.

Cookie.
Cookie is a file contains information about visitors of a website. Cookie can be saved automatically into your computer without you even notice about it. Sometimes a webmaster or website owner needs information on their website’s visitor about when did the visitor arrived in the website and some cookies have an expiration date depends on the website owner.

Download.
A process of transferring data from a website, or webhost to be exact, to a computer. This usually counted in bytes.
To download a file you can use a browser software, download managers or FTP softwares.
Some download managers are user friendly and easy to use, even for a user with less knowledge about computer software.

FTP.
File Transfer Protocol. This is a common method of uploading and downloading files to your website.
Filezilla is an example of user friendly FTP software, it is distributed for free.

Javascript.
A common language used to write ’scripts’ on websites. It is a script that can make a website more interactive.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group).
This is the most popular picture format for the web, named after the group that invented this format.
If you want to upload your pictures on your website, i believe you should save them as JPEG.

Hardware.
Hardware is computer equipment that physically exists. Hardware is the opposite of software.

Hosting.
If you have a website and you want everyone from everywhere to see your website then you should have a web server that is capable of 24/7 online, so everyone can see your website. If you are unable to provide a 24/7 online web server then you should buy a service that is specially provide such service.

HTML. HyperText Markup Language.
A simple code used to indicate how to display a web pages, using a small ‘tags’ system.
As an example, a “b” tag displays text in bold, and the ‘img’ tag displays a picture.

Hyperlink.
A hyperlink is a text on a website that can be click and take you to another site, or to another page within the same site. A hyperlink usually created by using anchor tag “a”.

Software.
Software is a program that runs on the computer or a program make your website work.
For example, Firefox is a software, Apache is also a software.

Spider.
Spider is a program or a code used by search engine to scan your site, by crawling your site it would help them decide where it should appear when people search.
Getting visited by web spiders it good, these means your website will appear in search engine in a short time.

Upload.
Uploading is a process of transfering data from your computer into your website or web server. As an example, you can upload your company logo, post an article to your website or blog.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
This is a simple way of saying ‘web address’. This is what you have to type in your browser’s address bar to get directly to your website.