Websites come with a lot of jargon. You don’t need to learn any of it to have a great site, because we handle it for you. But if you’re curious, or someone mentions a term you don’t recognise, here’s what it means in plain English.
Your web address
- Domain
- Your address on the internet, like yourbusiness.com. You rent it by the year, so it needs to be renewed to stay yours.
- Registrar
- The company you rent your domain from.
- DNS
- The internet's address book. When someone types your address, DNS tells their browser where your website actually lives. It also tells email where to go.
- DNSSEC
- A security layer for DNS. It stops anyone from faking your address and sending your visitors somewhere else.
- WHOIS privacy
- Every domain has an owner record. WHOIS privacy hides your name, phone number and home address from that public record.
- Auto-renewal
- Your domain renews automatically before it expires, so you never lose it by accident.
Where your site lives
- Hosting
- The service that keeps your website's files on a computer that's always on and connected, so people can visit it any time.
- Server
- That always-on computer. Good servers are fast, secure and looked after.
- Uptime
- How much of the time your site is online. The goal is as close to 100% as possible.
- Monitoring
- Automatic checks that watch your site day and night and send an alert if something goes wrong.
- Backups
- Saved copies of your website. If something breaks, a backup puts it back the way it was.
Keeping your site safe
- HTTPS
- The secure version of a web connection. It's what puts the padlock next to your address in the browser.
- SSL certificate
- The digital certificate that makes HTTPS work. Without one, browsers warn visitors that your site is "not secure". You'll sometimes see it called SSL/TLS.
- Firewall
- A filter that sits in front of your website and blocks harmful requests, like hacking attempts, before they reach your pages. A web application firewall (WAF) is one built specifically for websites.
- Brute-force attack
- When someone tries to break in by guessing passwords over and over. Tools like Fail2Ban spot the repeated attempts and block them.
- SSH
- A secure way for technical people to connect to a server. Locking it down to "keys only" means a password alone can't get anyone in.
- DDoS attack
- Short for distributed denial-of-service. Someone floods a site with fake traffic to overwhelm it and knock it offline. DDoS protection absorbs that traffic so real visitors still get through.
- Site isolation
- Keeping each website separate on a server, so a problem with one site can't spread to yours.
Speed
- Page speed
- How quickly your pages appear. Faster sites keep more visitors and do better on Google.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's own measures of how fast and smooth a page feels to real people. Google uses them when deciding how to rank your site.
- CDN
- Short for content delivery network. Copies of your site are kept on computers around the world, so every visitor gets it from somewhere close by.
- Caching
- Keeping a ready-made copy of a page so it can be shown instantly, instead of being put together from scratch every time.
- Static HTML
- A website built as simple, ready-to-go pages. There's very little for the browser to download or run, which makes it fast.
Being found on Google and AI tools
- SEO
- Short for search engine optimization. Everything that helps your site show up when people search for what you do.
- Title and meta description
- The headline and short summary Google shows for your page in search results. Every page should have its own.
- Structured data
- Hidden labels in your site's code that tell Google and AI tools the facts clearly: your business name, location, services and so on. You'll sometimes see it called Schema.org markup.
- XML sitemap
- A list of every page on your site, made for search engines, so none of your pages get missed.
- AI-ready
- A site that AI tools like ChatGPT can read and understand, so they can point people to you. Here's what that means in practice.
- Broken link
- A link that leads to a page that no longer exists. They frustrate visitors and look careless to search engines, so they're worth fixing.
How your site is built
- WordPress
- A popular system for building websites. It's flexible, but it relies on add-ons that need regular updates.
- Plugin
- An add-on that gives a website an extra feature. Every plugin is one more thing to keep updated and one more possible way in for hackers.
- Page builder
- A drag-and-drop tool for designing pages. Easy to use, but it often makes sites slower.
- Mobile first
- Designing for phones first, then for larger screens, because most visitors arrive on a phone.
- Responsive
- A site that rearranges itself to fit any screen, from a phone to a large monitor.
- Design system
- Your brand's colours, fonts and styles, set out once and used everywhere, so everything you make looks like it comes from the same business. The individual settings are sometimes called design tokens.
- Call to action
- A clear next step for the visitor, like "Book a visit" or "Get started".
Email and your domain
- MX record
- A DNS setting that tells the internet where to deliver email sent to your domain.
- SPF and DKIM
- Two DNS settings that prove your emails really come from you. They help your messages land in inboxes instead of spam folders.
You don’t have to manage any of this
That’s a lot of terms. The good news is you don’t need to remember them. When you work with us, all of this is set up and looked after for you. If you ever hear a word you’re not sure about, just ask Miguel. He’s happy to explain it.
