Have you ever read an article by one author using computer terms and jargon in one way... and then hours later read another article by a different author using the same terms in a totally different way? Enough to put you in a mind warp!
Or how about the email you got from your web host telling you that all you need to do to fix your problem is FTP the axee to rop and that it's probably all your fault because you dongled your SEX.
Confusing? Yes!
Frustrating? You bet!
Trying to communicate clearly while doing business on the internet can often be a hair pulling experience. In fact some days pulling out your hair can be more fun!
For example I bet half of you don't really know what URL stands for. You might know that it stands for a website address, but do you know what URL is an acronym for?
In order to communicate clearly, it is important to speak the same language as everyone else... and since most dictionaries haven't caught up to the internet phenomena, we've put together a mini dictionary of some of the most commonly used internet jargon, slang and acronyms.
Here's your guide to what those saying really means ...
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
That was enlightening, wasn't it! What it means is totally unformatted text. No special fonts, no bold, no italics, no underlining, no color. Nothing. Just plain text.
Most email comes in this form. If you have an email program that allows you to use specialized fonts, colors and text styles, use it carefully because people getting your email may not have programs capable of reproducing it... all they will see is a pile of junk code, and your message gets lost in the mess.
Autoresponder
As the word implies an autoresponder sends an automatic response in the form of an email. A visitor can request information by sending an email to the autoresponder or by clicking on an online link.
You can set up autoresponders to send out sales information, letters, follow-up inquiries, or notices. For example, if you are not able to answer your email inquiries quickly, you could set up an autoresponder to send a note informing email senders that "I am not able to answer my mail right now, however you will receive a reply within 48 hours" or something to that effect.
Some web hosts offer autoresponders for a fee. You can also set up an unlimited number of your own autoresponders using software such as Mailloop. You can get more information on the Mailloop software at by clicking here.
Browser
Software that goes to an internet address and reads HTML, Javascript, CGI scripts, etc. It turns a page that looks like this...
Hi!!
into this...
Hi!!
The most common browsers are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, both of which you can download for free at http://www.netscape.com/ and http://www.microsoft.com/ respectively.
CGI
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. The "common" means that any browser is compatible with it. It is a "mini-program" that resides on your web host's computer (server). CGI scripts are commonly used for processing forms. For example, you might have a short sign-up form for your newsletter on your website. The CGI script takes that information off the website and sends it to you for so that you can include it in your database.
There are hundreds of free CGI scripts at http://www.cgi-resources.com/
Cookie
A heavenly food group! Also a source of much suspicion and controversy. When you visit some sites, a small file called a cookie is written onto your hard drive either using CGI or Javascript. This file is basically used as an ID number. When you go back to visit the site they know you are visiting again.
Unless you provide them with your name and other information, they have no way of knowing who you are... and only the site that placed the cookie can track it.
Why use them? Well, the obvious reason is to differentiate new visitors from repeat visitors and to be able to track where visitors are going in a site. But there are other applications... I'll give you two examples.
I have a friend who frequently visits a site that provides TV and movie listings. When she first visited the site, she was given the option of either customizing what theatres she wanted to see and what television stations she wanted listings for. This information was linked to a cookie on her hard drive. Now, whenever she visits the site, information customized to her specifications is automatically displayed. If she went to the same site using a different computer, none of her customized information would be displayed. Why? Because the cookie is on the computer's hard drive... it is NOT linked to her.
A second example is related to our Associate Program. When a visitor follows a link from one of our associates to our site, a cookie is placed on the visitor's hard drive. The cookie links the visitor to the associate. When the visitor makes a purchase of our Insider Secrets Course, the cookie allows us to track who sent the visitor to us... months or even years later. This helps us to make sure the associate who sent us the visitor is credited with the sale and gets their proper commission.
Basically a cookie is an ID number, it doesn't take up much space on your hard drive and unless you provide your name, phone number, etc... there is no way to tell who you are. Cookies are only useful to the site that gave it to you.
Directory
A giant listing of millions of URLs organized by categories. A directory is not a search engine, though many people think it is. It is organized by categories, not by keywords. You are severely restricted to the number of listings you can have in a directory... whereas in a search engine you can list an unlimited number of key words.
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/ and LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com/ are examples of directories.
Domain Name
A name that identifies one or more URLs. For example, in the URL http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop.html, the domain name is marketingtips.com.
Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain it belongs to. The Internet started out with a limited number of top level domains including:
gov - Government agencies
edu - Educational institutions
org - Organizations (nonprofit)
mil - Military
com - commercial business
net - Network organizations
ca - Canada
Because of a shortage of top level domain names a new batch of suffixes were added in 1998.
Domain names are what you advertise, the way people get to know you and what visitors type in as a URL... however the Internet is really based on IP addresses (a string of numbers) not domain names. Therefore every Web server requires a Domain Name System (DNS) server to translate domain names into IP addresses. When you purchase website space with a web host, they assign an IP address to your domain name.
Ezine
An electronic magazine that is emailed to a list of subscribers.
FTP
The long form is File Transfer Protocol. This is a method of transferring and downloading files. It used to be the only way, now there are simpler methods such as email attachments, pdf and html files. Uploading files to your website is done using FTP.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language is the code that browsers read and translate into a pretty looking web page. It tells the browser how to format and where to put text, graphics, forms, tables, sound and video.
To see a sample of the HTML and what it looks like in a browser, see the definition of "Browser" above.
Hyperlink
When you click on a hyperlink you are transferred to a different place in space. This could be to a different spot on the same page, to a different page on the same website, or to a different website all together. Hyperlinks are normally underlined and in a color like this When they are activated they change color like this. Hyperlinks can also be in the form of arrows, buttons, or graphics.
IP Address
The format of an IP address is a set of four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be zero to 255. For example, 30.148.12.135 could be an IP address.
On the internet IP addresses are unique sets of registered numbers and are often called Internet addresses. The InterNIC Registration Service assigns Internet addresses that identify a particular network and a host on that network. Your web host provides you with an IP address that is linked to your domain name.
Because the number of unassigned Internet addresses is running out, a new scheme called CIDR will gradually replace the present system.
ISP
ISP stands for Internet Service Provider... this is the company that provides you with access to the Internet.
The ISP is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day (theoretically). If you have dial-up access, your computer's modem dials your ISP's phone number, which connects you to the Internet and allows you access to your email. If your ISP provides cable service, you too have access to the Internet 24 hours a day simply by having your computer turned on.
Keyword
A keyword is used by people when using the search engines to surf the web. Keywords can be used in combination or as a phrase to find web pages that are of interest to the surfer.
For example, people might use the keywords "internet marketing", "internet sales" or "Corey Rudl" to find our Insider Secrets Course.
Meta Tags
Meta Tags provide keyword and site specific information to search engines. This information is not visible to the web surfer unless they view the source of your webpage.
PDF
PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It is another way of formatting a file... like html or ASCII. It is promoted and marketed by Adobe Systems Inc. If you receive a PDF file it can be read using Adobe Acrobat Reader and can be used by both windows and Mac users. PDF files are increasingly found in e-books and by large companies and government departments.
To get a free copy of Acrobat Reader click here http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html
Redirect
A redirect happens whenever you type in the address of one page... and arrive at an entirely different address. Redirects are normally done through CGI scripts or Meta tags. For example if you type in www.marketingtips.com/track/affiliate/ you will be redirected to www.marketingtips.com/affiliates/
Redirect pages are useful if you are removing a page from your website that has a lot of existing links to it... or if you want to move people to a different site.
Search Engine
Search Engines are used as a tool to find other relevant websites. When you visit a search engine site you type in keywords or phrases. The search engine uses their technology to find websites that best match the keywords you are looking for. Each search engine has different criteria by which they "rate" and list websites. You will get different results by searching for the same keyword combinations using different search engines.
Getting your website or webpage ranked high in the search engines is an important part of bringing in traffic to your site.
These are a few of the most common search engines:
Excite: http://excite.com
InfoSeek: http://infoseek.go.com
AltaVista: http://www.altavista.com
HotBot: http://www.hotbot.com
Lycos: http://www.lycos.com
Webcrawler: http://www.webcrawler.com
Northern Light: http://www.northernlight.com
Secure Server
If you are going to collect money or personal information at your website you need access to a secure server. The secure server encrypts personal information to make sure it cannot be "stolen" by unscrupulous sorts.
There are different "images" to show that you are on a secure page. If you use Internet Explorer, you will see a closed lock symbol, and with Netscape, you will either see a solid key symbol or it now displays a lock symbol similar to the one Microsoft uses,
Please note, you do not have to have your entire site secured ... just your order page that includes personal information including credit card information.
Spam
Unsolicited email sent to a large quality of people. It also relates if you post something off topic to a large number newsgroups.
Your ISP may shut down your email account for sending spam and your webhost may suspend your service for sending spam, so careful is the keyword here!
Spamdexing
Keyword stuffing in your Meta tags to get a higher ranking on search engines. This isn't as dangerous as Spamming, but can cause you to not be listed on a lot of search engines if they figure out what you are doing!
Spider
When search engines are "indexing" or registering a site they send out spiders to "crawl" though the site. The search engine then indexes the site through an ever changing set of algorithms. The algorithms determine how your site is ranked. Some search engines spiders use Meta Tags... others don't.
Web Host
Often used synonymously with ISP... this is the service that sells (or gives) you computer space for your website. The web host's computers are hooked to the Internet 24 hours a day.
UCE
Unsolicited Commercial Email. Spam, just a different way of saying it..
And for those of you who don't know...
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. The unique address of a website or a webpage.
Those are some of the more common internet terms. Now when someone asks you to FTP information to their ISP's URL ... you'll actually know what they are talking about! And when I mention spiders and meta tags you'll know I am probably talking about search engines!
However... what I've given you above is only the tip of the iceberg. According to the New Hacker's Dictionary (something you can find at any good bookstore) there are thousands of words relating to computer and internet jargon. Try these on for size... ScumOS, search-and-destroy mode or how about daemon? In the hackers world even the word SEX or dongle will give you a giggle. But I'm not going to give it away... not a chance! You'll just have to go and see for yourself!
In case you run across a term or acronym you aren't familiar with, you can look them up at http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/ which has one of the easier to use versions of the Dictionary.
