Page View. When this item shows up in your website statistics, it indicates how many full pages were sent to a site visitor. If your pages has two images, it will have three hits, but only one page view. Thus, it is a better visitor count than page hits. See also hit.

Password. This is a code used to log in. A good password might be 8 characters or more in length, include capital and lower case letters plus numbers. and not contain a recognizable word in your country's language.

PICS Platform for Internet Content Selection. This W3 specification was originally used so that parents might better control what their children see on the Internet. It also helps Web rating services. Having an authorized PICS icon and link on your site helps to comfort parents, and to build credibility with them.

Ping. This is a signal -- and a program used to send the signal -- to determine if a server is operational.

Pixel. The smallest point which a screen displays. Your computer screen is usually set up to work as 640x40, 800x600 or 1,024x768 pixels. Each pixel contains its own information regarding color, texture, etc.

Point. Type fonts are measured in points. On paper, there are 72 points in an inch. (...About 72. The French inch (in which Didot created the system) is not the same as the English inch. ...Figures. So it ends up at somewhere around 72.27 points per inch, from what we are told. Thus, at 72 pixels/inch, a point is one pixel in size. At 300 pixels/inch, a point is 4.2 pixels in height. But a pixel is the smallest visible point on the screen. So, your software will either resolve it to 4 points flat, or go to 5 pixels, with that last pixel in a light shade of the character's color. The point size of a font is measured from the top of the tallest ascender to the end of the longest descender. Then there's also the leading (pronounced "ledding," another holdover from the "hot type" days) -- the space between lines -- to consider. ...Except in special type fonts, which can throw away those rules. So, the closest definition is ... wait for it ... it depends.

Plug-in. An add-on to your browser to allow it to handle certain applications.

POP. Point of presence. Post office protocol. A POP (point of presence) is a physical location. It is the phone number you dial to access the Web. The other POP (the protocol)is the manner in which your email client obtains mail from your ISP. POP3 is just such a protocol. See also IMAP.

Pop-up window. This is a small window which appears over the main one on your screen. It may also appear behind it, ready to show its ugly face when you close the big window. Pop-ups are very useful when selected by the website visitor. When they are triggered automatically when your webpage comes up, and since they usually contain obnoxious advertising, they are one of the surest ways to get you -- and the ad sponsor -- absolutely hated.

Popularity. Several search engines such as Google.com evaluate how many websites link to yours. That's inbound links, not outbound. This gives weight to your ranking in the search results. We recommend that you contact at least five other sites per week which are related to yours in some way, and offer to share reciprocal links. This can become a very powerful tool to help improve your position in a search.

Port. This is more than a physical connection on your computer. When located in a URL -- such as .com: 8000 -- it identifies a specific entry point to that server.

Portal. When you go onto the Web, what is the first place you are likely to see? That is your portal. It may be a page with a search engine, a collection of websites to interest you, etc. AOL is a portal for the general public. A medical directory may be a favorite portal for a doctor. It's where you want most to start your Internet experience.

PPP. Point to point protocol. When your modem dials in to a computer, it is connecting to a specific point, and uses a common protocol to communicate.

Protocol. A set of rules. A format. FTP is a way that your computer can send files to a server, and vice versa, so that each understands what the other is doing, and how it should handle what is being sent.

Proxy server. This computer is a middle-man between the server and the client. You would most often see a proxy server in an Intranet, as its access point (if there is one) to the outside world.

PSTN. Public switched telephone network. 25-cent word for the phone system.

Raster graphic. This is a bitmap image, meaning that it is made up of pixels laid out in a grid. Because it has a fixed resolution, often you cannot resize a bitmap image without affecting its quality. See also vector graphic.

Relevance. URLs will show up in a search engine based in large part upon how well their keywords match up to the contents of your query. Higher relevance should result in a better position in the list. It is evaluated differently by different search engines, and they keep changing their algorithms.

Robot. See spider.

Robots.txt file. A simple text file placed in the root directory, this is intended as an instruction to polite search engines not to visit certain directories at this site. It is not a guarantee of privacy, however. The file should contain the following. "directory_name" is the area being excluded:

# Prevent robots from using these directories
# To prevent all access would be simply /
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /directory_name1/
Disallow: /directory_name2/
Disallow: /directory_name3/

Router. This is the magical computer or software program which controls how the packets of a packet switched network gets moved around.

Search engine. An indexer of webpages. They send out crawlers, or spiders, to review a submitted site. You enter a query, and they return to you pages they found at the site, according to the information which they stored after the review. Also see directory.

Secure server. A server which employs SSL protection.

SEO. Search engine optimization. The practice of designing a webpage so that it has a better chance of a high ranking in a search engine.

Server. The computer (or its software) that hosts a website and/or email files.

Server side includes (SSI). These are commands included in a webpage which processed at the server end, not in the local browser. Such webpages will have an "s" in the extension, such as ".shtml" instead of ".html." An entry in the webpage
such as <!--#echo var ="LAST_MODIFIED"-->
or <!--#flastmod file ="index.html"--> will post the date the page was last updated, or <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"--> gets the current date. To get the results of a hit counter, the code might be <!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/counter.pl"-->. Or, a commonly used page heater or footer might be called by <!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->. Just what codes are allowed will depend upon the server software used, such as "Apache 1.2 or later."

Site. The collection, as well as the location, of your webpages.

SMTP. Simple mail transfer protocol. A protocol used to send email from one server to another.

Spam. Actually has nothing to do with the processed meat made by Hormel Corporation. Instead, it refers to a famous Monty Python skit. In a diner, the menu is Spam (tm) on Spam (tm) with a Spam (tm) side dish, etc., repeated so many times that it becomes almost painful. On the Internet, the word comes from the incessant repetition. Spam is repeated, unwanted, advertising email. Spam is differentiated from a scam (fraud) and a hoax (which tricks you into believing something false).

Spider. A piece of software that visits your website and gathers data so that the search engine may index it.

Spyware. Any software that gathers your information through the Internet without your knowledge. This information can be used to track your Internet habits usually for advertising purposes.

SQL. Structured Query Language. This is a method of sending queries to -- and also names -- an Internet-based database program.

SSI. Server side includes. Pieces of software residing on the server which give the webpage dynamic content.

SSL. Secure socket layer. A protocol intended to allow privacy. When you communicate with a shopping cart and are about to send a credit card number, look for an "s" in the address, as "https://" because this ensures that you are in an encrypted SSL environment. An SSL page must reside on a secure server, for protection from hacking. The shopping cart owner must have a Security Certificate for authentication. This can be a very expensive, sole-owner subscription (renewed annually or semi-annually). Or, it may be an almost invisible (cost-wise) shared certificate provided by your secure server host.

Storage capacity. When listed in a host's advertising, it refers to the amount of data which your site can support before you incur surcharges. For example, 500 Mb. Now, assume a webpage of 30 Kb, and two images of 35 Kb each. It takes 100 Kb to support that page. 500 Mb = 500 x 1,024 kb/Mb = 512,000 Kb / 100 Kb on your page = capacity for 5,120 webpages of that size. ...Or around 256 2-Mb pages.

Streaming media. This is used for product demonstrations, advertising, plus "Webcast" pay-per-view and sports events. It is also often misused to slow down your access to many websites -- except in those cases where it satisfies your reason for going to the site in the first place. The idea for streaming audio and streaming video is to allow you to start enjoying sound and motion before the related file is fully downloaded from the website. For example, in streaming video, a series of images is sent to you. They display as soon as each arrives. The result is apparent motion, just as a motion picture is a series of individual frames. An Arbitron study shows that, as of January 2003, over 100 million people aged 12 or older have experienced Internet audio or video. You need to have a player attached to your browser, either inherently or you download it as a plug-in. In operation, a large file is compressed at the server end, downloaded to you, and uncompressed, in chunks, to show on your screen. If your website's host does not provide such huge amounts of storage capacity, you will begin paying a premium price for hosting once you move to streaming media onto your website. Your server also needs a great deal of bandwidth to handle multiple simultaneous Web visitors. So, when evaluating an ISP as a potential host, if you want to handle streaming media then be sure to ask if they support multimedia applications. You should also evaluate if your increased data throughput will increase your hosting cost.

T-1, T-3. T-1 lines are approximately 1.5 Mbps in speed. T-3 goes at approximately 44.7 Mbps. See bandwidth.

TCP-IP. Transmission control protocol/Internet protocol. The basic rules for controlling how communication is done on the Internet. Trumpet Winsock is one such set.

Telnet. A program used to login from one point on the Internet to another.

Terabyte. 1000 Gigabytes. See also Gigabyte and Megabyte.

Text browser. As the name implies, this is a browser which depends upon seeing text, not graphics. One of the most popular ones appears to be Lynx. See also browser.

Throughput. Data transmission speed, measured in Kbps. See bandwidth.

TIFF. TIF. Tagged image file format. A graphic format.

Top level domain. The far right hand portion of a domain name. The ".com" part.

Transfer. When listed in a host's advertising, it refers to the amount of data which your base price includes per month, before you incur surcharges. For example, 30 Gb. Now, assume a webpage of 30 Kb, and two images of 35 Kb each. It takes 100 Kb to transfer that page. 30 Gb = 30 x 1,024 Mb/Gb x 1,024 kb/Mb = 31,457,280 Kb / 100 Kb on your page = 314,573 pages per month / 31 = capacity for 10,146 hits per day. Important: Do not confuse Transfer with bandwidth.

Trojan horse. See virus.

Unix. A multi-user computer operating system.

Upload. To transfer a file from your computer to the server.

URL. Uniform resource locator. This is your website's address, right down to the http://.

USENET. A world-wide collection of discussion groups.

Vector graphic. This is an "object based" approach that downloads instructions regarding color and shape instead of sending the elements themselves. Since you can say "draw a line from point A to point B" faster than you can send all of the individual points in between, the file size is smaller than a raster graphic. This means it can be transmitted faster, too. It can also be resized without distortion. See also raster graphic.

Virus. A program which copies itself without your help. Along the way it can modify or destroy other programs and files on your computer. In common parlance, we use the word virus to include computer viruses (code intended to directly hurt your system), worms (viruses that attach themselves to programs and emails to be spread), and Trojan horses (destructive programs impersonating benign programs).

WAIS. Wide area information service. A system for indexing data in databases on the Web.

Wardriving. This involves driving around with a Wi-Fi-equipped computer, such as a laptop or a PDA, in one's vehicle, detecting Wi-Fi wireless networks.

WAV. An audio format.

Webmaster. The person who maintains and administers a website.

webpage. A document intended for being viewed in a browser.

Who-Is. This is what a "finger" was called after domain name registrars buckled to the Politically Correct Police. You do a "who-is" at an Internet registrar such as Network Solutions to find out who is the current owner of a domain name, and who is the host. Our list of country codes can help.

Worm. See virus.

WWW. W3. World Wide Web. The Internet.

XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) is a bridge between HTML4 and XML. Its purpose is to continue a growth path for HTML toward XML. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were optionally introduced in HTML4, but are required in XHTML. In XHTML there are three Document Type Declarations (DTDs) to support the transition... Strict, Transitional, and Frameset. Frameset and Transitional go away by the time you reach XHTML 1.1. New XHTML types will be based upon this more structured approach. Using XHTML helps to build confidence that your webpages will look more the same from one browser to the next.

XML. eXtensible markup language. A way to define complex documents and data structures. The programmer develops a schema, or definition, for his data, and then the program built around the schema massages the information as needed.