If you are already on the web or thinking about it then you must
know the terminology used on the web. Here is a Glossary of a
few must know Web Terms. Visitors: The number of distinct people
who visit your site. Page Views: The number of web pages that
have been viewed by the visitors to your site. If a single page
is viewed many times by a visitor, each view is treated as a new
page view. Hits: When a visitor views a page that has 3 graphics
or images on it, he / she will give you 4 hits. 1 for the HTML
page and 3 for the graphics. As hits are meaningless, you must
not express your site statistics in terms of Hit count. Referrer
URL: It is the web site from which the visitor has arrived to
your site. Assume that the xyzsite.com web site has a link to
your site on all its pages. When a surfer clicks on your sites'
link and arrives at your site, xyzsite.com becomes your Referrer
URL. Thus a referrer url indicates the sites which are giving
you traffic. If surfers type the url of your site in their
browsers to arrive at your site, it will be shown as a Direct
Hit in the Referrer URL list. Targeted Traffic: It includes the
surfers who visit your site because they want the product or
service or information which is being offered by your site.
Usually a Search Engine or Directory will produce Targeted
Traffic to your site. Your aim should be to build Targeted
Traffic to your site. A link or banner without supporting
content will produce untargeted traffic. Page Creation Tools:
They let you work with a single HTML document at a time.
Netscape Composer is a Page Creation Tool. Site Creation Tools:
They let you work with several HTML documents at once. MS Front
Page is a Site Creation Tool. WYSIWYG HTML Editor: This is short
for " What You See Is What You Get ". It is pronounced as
We-z-Wig. A WYSIWYG HTML Editor will create the HTML page for
you. All tags are automatically inserted by the editor when you
click buttons. You only need to type in the text of your
document. A WYSIWYG Editor is very useful while working with
tables as it displays the table structure i.e. rows and columns.
Netscape Composer ,which is part of the Netscape Communicator 4
& higher package, is a WYSIWYG HTML Editor. HTML Validation: It
is a software program which you can install on your computer. It
is used to determine if the HTML code in your web page has any
errors on it. Validating your HTML code ensures that your web
page will be displaced correctly by most browsers. Direct
Linking: If your web host allows direct linking to servers then
a file (.zip, .exe) from your web site can be downloaded from
another web site by hyperlinking. However, most of the free web
hosts like Tripod, Geocities, Angelfire etc. do not allow Direct
Linking. Thus surfers will need to visit your web page to
download any file. Spider: When you submit a web site to a
Search Engine (SE), the SE will send out spiders (software
program) to your site. These spiders will record information
about your site and bring it back to the SE. The info brought by
the spiders is added to the database of the SE. This process is
known as indexing. After your site has been indexed it will be
ranked and listed by the SE, so that the site shows up in the
search results. Yahoo doesn't use spiders. All info is added
manually to the Yahoo database. Thus Yahoo is a directory and
not a Search Engine. Autoresponder: It is a software that sends
an automated reply or replies to emails sent to it. The reply or
replies are pre written and saved on the web server by the web
site owner. As the replies are automated, it saves time & effort
for the web site owner. Autoresponders can be used for sending
product details to customers, to handle subscription requests or
to send follow up messages to prospective customers.
About the author:
The author is the web master for the
http://NewsForUse.FreeHosting.net/ web site. He uses his spare
time to collect and compile articles of VALUE on various topics.