TGM Designs

TGM Designs created this glossary of web design and related terminology to help our clients to know and understand what services we provide. The terms cited are used regularly throughout Web development and design documentation. If you are starting a new website project then you will find these terms very helpful. This glossary's intention is to be relevant and beneficial to your understanding rather than be comprehensive.

C / C++

A high-level programming language used for graphical applications such as those run on Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

CACHE

Temporary files stored on the the user's local harddrive that the browser will store for reuse. Browsing "History" is a common example.

Campaign

A banner or group of banners displayed online which are measured together for their effectiveness.

CASIE

Acronym for Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment. Founded in 1994 by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) to guide the development of interactive advertising and marketing.

CGI

Acronym for Common Gateway Interface (CGI). An interface for Web server software that allows it's custom programs to interact with the Web and user.

CGI-BIN

A folder or directory on a web server that stores CGI programs or CGI related files.

CLICK STREAM

The path a user has taken through a website. Most commonly saved in Access Logs. Commonly used by Internet marketers to analyize the effective of new features in a site as well as other enhancements.

CLICK THROUGH

Also known as Click Thru. This is the number of visitors who have clicked on a web advertisement; most generally in the form of statistics.

CLIENT

A type of software program designed to contact and obtain data from a server software program or another computer. A web browser, for example, is a type of Client.

CMYK

Acronym for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black (CMYK). In print design, colors are defined as a percentage of the four colors listed. In constract though, most devices such as computer monitors use RGB color defintions.

COLD FUSION

An application created by Macromedia (now Adobe) that creates HTML pages with databases. Most pages used with this software end in .cfm.

Column Ad

A banner ad that is more tall than it is wide, with the dimensions of 150 x 800 pixels. Commonly placed on the right side of a web pages. Column ads are also known as vertical or skyscraper banners.

COMMENT

A piece of feedback left by a visitor of a site on a blog post or used in feedback forms on the website's Contact Us page.

CONTENT

Everything included inside a website including text, graphics, images, banners, etc.

Content Management

The activity of acquiring, collecting, authoring/editing, tracking, accessing, and often delivering both structured and unstructured digital information - collectively "content". The content can include financial data, business records, customer service data, marketing information, images, video, or other types of digital information.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A Content Management System or CMS is a system that seperates the content from the code used to build the website. It usually has a backend administrative area that allows non-technical users to update their webpage. Learn More...

Conversion

A desirable action that follows the initial click on a banner. This desirable action could be a sale, or a registration, or simply having the viewing go to a certain page on the site or staying on the site a certain amount of time.

COOKIES

A text file placed on the user's local harddrive by some webpages that the user will visit while browsing the Internet. A cookie allows the website to track visits and record information such as what browser the user visited with, what operating system the user's computer has, the user's screen resolution and other information. When the user returns to the website, it will retrieve the stored cookie file and use that to target content to the user. This also allows websites to remember passwords, "Remember Me's" and much more.

COUNTRY CODES

Helps indentify the country that a website is being served from. Mostly used for government and educational purposes. Commonly used Country Codes:

	.au - Australia
	.ca - Canada
	.ch - Switzerland
	.de - Germany
	.fr - France
	.jp - Japan
	.mx - Mexico
	.ru - Russia
	.uk - United Kingdom
	.us - United States

CRAWLER

Also known as a spider, a crawler is a program that visits websites and reads the information to gather information for the search engine index.

CSS

Acronym for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Cascading Style Sheets define how the website appears to the visitor. Not all browsers render CSS the same way, so it will appear slightly different in each.

CTR

Acronym for Click Through Rate. This is the percentage of times a banner ad is clicked on out of the total number of ad views. For example, if a web page containing your ad is seen by 1,000 users and 20 clicks are made on the ad, the click-through rate is 5 percent.

CYBER SQUATTING

The act of buying a popular domain name with the intent of selling it.