What to expect when you're expecting...a website

A guide for companies thinking about creating a website.
By John Rossitter of www.rossitterconsulting.com, a Shreveport webdesign company

Glossary

.NET Framework

A programming environment provided by Microsoft that makes web programming easier

Analytics Server

A server program that tracks visitors and their activity on your website. This will let you know who is visiting your website

ASP.NET

Active Server Pages for the .NET Framework. The website programming language that your website will be written in. ASP.NET is created by Microsoft and easy to find web programmers who understand.

Bandwidth

A measurement of network activity over a period of time. Many web hosts charge per Gigabit of bandwidth.

Breadcrumb

A navigation system used on websites that helps users get back and forth from pages they have been on. Think Hansel and Grettle

CMS

Content Management System, Is a way for non programmers to maintain their own website content.

DAL

Data Abstraction Layer, is a way of programming your website to access the database in the fastest, and cleanest way possible. With the added bonus of portability.

DNS

Domain Name System, a internet system which translates a .com name to an IP address of the server(s) that host it

Domain Name

A .com name that you lease form a domain registrar like Go Daddy or Network Solutions. Legal Ownership of a domain name belongs to the registrar. Legal rights of usage are transferred to the person or business entity who leases the name

Email Blasts

A way for you to send hundreds of emails to hundreds of people with the click of one button.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol, A cleverly named networking protocol used to transfer files from one computer to another

IIS

Internet Information Server, A program that lives on a web server that actually sends files to website visitors

IP Address

A number that is assigned to each computer on the internet. Kind of like a phone number for a computer.

Mail Server

A server program that sends. Receives and stores emails for you.

Master Pages

A way of programming websites which makes sure that app pages within a website look and feel the same.

PDF

Portable Document Format, a type of document often used on the internet which is best viewed with Adobe Acrobat.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization, The art and science of tuning your webpage content to better be indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo!

Shopping Cart

A way of Programming a website, that allows users to place many items in into a temporary storage mechanism until they are ready to checkout.

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the internet protocol used send and receive emails

SQL Server

A Powerful database platform written by Microsoft which will store all of the data about your website.

SSL

An Encrypted protocol used for web pages on the internet. SSL Will make sure that hackers cannot spy on you while you are connected to a website.

SSL Certificate

A file your must purchase from a Signing Authority like VeriSign or Go Daddy. This file will be installed on the server that hosts your website , and will positively identify that server as being you. This is REQUIRED to run SSL

Stored Procedures

A high performance way of writing TSQL, whereby the code you execute on the database lives in the database and not your webpage.

Table Normalization

A method of creating databases which make queries execute at optimal performance

TCP/IP

A Communications protocol used on the internet

TSQL

Transact Structured Query Language, the programming language used to talk to SQL Server Databases

URL

Uniform Resource Locater, a www address like http://www.rossitterconsulting.com

URL Rewriting

A way of making easy to read URLs for your visitors. It will transform a URL like http://www.rossitterconsulting.com/Projects.aspx?Doc=a1hu234&user=1asdf5&Article=HowToDoSomething into http://www.rossitterconsulting.com/Projects/Article/1

Web Browser

A Program used to view web pages with. Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, Opera

Web Hosting

Once your website is created, the files that comprise it must be placed on a server somewhere in the world. A web host is a company who takes responsibility for making sure that your files are online and readily available.

Webmail

Webmail is a way of accessing your email via w web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Hotmail is a great example of a webmail client.

Web Server

A computer specially designed to serve files on the internet to website visitors

Wrappers

Programming Jargon which means the source code used in your project will be as clean and reusable as humanly possible

-Rossitter Consulting is a Shreveport-Bossier City web design firm that offers affordable web design and hosting. Click HERE to read more