Web Development Glossary for Small Businesses

PHP: An open source programming language used to create websites that generate pages from a database instead of using static HTML or XML format pages. The popular open source blog software, WordPress, uses PHP extensively.

PPC: An online marketing technique. Companies use keywords in short adds or banner ads that are served up by search engines when the keyword is applicable to a particular search engine result. The expense of a PPC ad is calculated by number of clicks the ad receives. This ia an area of Internet marketing where testing of target keywords, word order in the ad and word choice can really pay off.

PNG: A PNG (pronounced "ping") file format is used for lossless compression of graphic images. PNG images can be created using millions of colors and has an added ability render the images background as transparent. Due to its added capacity, the PNG file format creates larger files than BMP, GIF and JPG formats.

Page Impressions: The number of times a web page has been visited by a user, also known as Page Hits.

PageRank: Google uses an algorithm that includes a website's link popularity to come up with a PageRank score. One usually needs Google's toolbar embedded in their web browser to see the PageRank indicator. Not updated by Google as often as it once was.

Policy Constraint: A type of business constraint that is characterized as a rule, management policy or thinking pattern that constrains maximum leveraging of an asset's capacity. For instance, treating a business website only as a static online billboard constrains a company from availing themselves of a website's interactive capacity to deliver ecommerce solutions and customer feedback.

Post: Derived from the snail mail terminology of "posting a letter", a post is a blog, newsgroup or online forum entry.

Project Management: The capacity of management to plan, track, implement, react to exigencies, utilize feedback, and complete a project.

Quality Control: In regards to website development, quality control is the maintaining of written and unwritten web standards in the creation and optimizing of business websites. The World Wide Web Consortium's HTML standards are and example of written standards, not writing paragraphs all in capital letters is an example of an unwritten standard.

QuickTime Video: Apple's audio/video file format and software processing application that creates and edits video files and digital audio files for downloading, playing or viewing on any client computer. Viewers need Apple's free cross platform file reader, Quicktime Player, for running the file.

ROI: An acronym for Return on Investment. The return as a profit or loss realized from the investment of money expended on a project, asset, or business venture. Also loosely used to include the expenditure of non-monetary assets such as time spent on a business, marketing campaign or particular business tool. Measurement of return on investment for a professional web design is usually measured in the amount of sales lead generation and closed sales.

Reciprocal Linking Strategy: The use of creating reciprocal links between two websites from which both websites derive benefit in terms of web traffic and link popularity.

Rich Media: Animation technology of a higher capacity than simple GIF animation. Flash animation and movies, streaming video, interactive web design elements.

Robot: An software program used by search engine companies to continually crawl the Internet and index websites' web page content, categorize the content by keyword. also know as spiders.

SCORE: The acronym for the Service Corps of Retired Executives, a 12,000-plus volunteer member association sponsored by the SBA. SCORE matches volunteer business-management counselors with present prospective small business owners in need of expert advice.

SEM: An acronym for Search Engine Marketing denoting online marketing solutions like PPC ads. Businesses pay search engine companies for the ability to run these ads on front page search results for specific keywords. SEM assists freshly launched business websites quickly gain visibility on search engine front pages.

SEO: An acronym for Search Engine Optimization. The sometimes seemingly arcane science involves utilizing all opportunities for aligning a website to Google's documented Webmaster Guidelines as well as undocumented operationally successful techniques with the goal of achieving higher ranking in the search engines' results.

Ethical or "White hat" SEO is optimization that is effective with no penalties assessed by search engines for its implementation. "Black hat" SEO is optimization techniques that seek to trick the search engines into ranking a website high and are contrary to Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Black hat techniques eventually result in a website's de-listing by the search engines with a resultant disappearance from any keyword search results.

Scope: As applied to web development and online marketing, scope is the definition of the work involved in, and end result desired from, the web development and deployment process including: graphic design, web content copywriting, SEO, PPC campaigns, and external link strategies. Scope creep happens a project's budget, timeline, and or requirement expand beyond the initial scope.

Script: In web development, a script is a series of software commands that, when executed, causes some action to happen. CGI, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby On Rails and PERL are examples of scripting languages. Web developers embed scripts in web pages to add dynamic actions or interactivity to a website.

Search Engine: A server-side software program created by companies like Google and Yahoo that indexes and catalogs websites' information. Search engines deliver search results to people entering keyword search queries with the software.

Search Engine Ranking: Denotes how close to the first position on the first page of a search engine's search results a website shows up for a given keyword. A measure of the success of an SEO optimization strategy.

Secure Web Server: Secure web servers are servers that contain one website and have additional layers of firewall security. Secure web servers are used by financial institutions, retail stores and stock brokerage firms to transact sensitive financial business. Encryption can be an added layer of security to protect information such as credit card numbers.

Shareware: Software programs and applets that can be downloaded and used prior to paying for the software. The payment for shareware is based on the honor system, with the only enforcement provision being if you desire support you need to register and pay for the software. Certain websites, like Tucows.comm are secure resources for many shareware programs.

Social Networking Website: Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are examples of social network websites. These sites build interactive online communities with persons sharing interests, news updates or activities. For business professionals, social networking sites like LinkedIn offer the opportunity to post professional resumes, establish and external link to their business website, as well as reinforce their company's brand.

Spyware: A computer software program that gets information from a user's computer without the user's knowledge or consent.

Static Web Page: An HTML/XML file format web page that is not dynamically populated through the use of scripts and a database. A static web page's content stays the same making it the easiest kind of web page to search engine optimize and for search engines to index.

Streaming Media: Streaming media is a large audio or audio/video file that is delivered over a period of time with the file getting opened and viewed or listened to before the complete file is downloaded. Streaming media also refers the use of the Internet to deliver online radio shows and seminars.