What are some common website terms I should be familiar with?

When working with websites, if you're fairly new to this, you might have come across some terms that you don't fully understand. Hopefully this page will leave you a little more enlightened.


  Download
Moving a file from the internet to your computer system is called "downloading".

  Http://
(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) This is the beginning of any internet address that your browser will use to find the website you are trying to access.

  Image Format
If you have to work with images, then you should be familiar with different types of image formats. This is the type of file that the graphic is, and the most common you'll see online are .bmp, .gif, .jpg and .png. I usually recommend saving images in .gif format if possible, although .jpg and .png are perfectly acceptable. Bmp images are larger in file size and lower in quality, and I strongly advise against using images in this format.

  FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) This is the protocol that allows you to upload files to the internet. Many online website providers make this procedure easy for you. All you have to do is browse your computer to find the file you want to upload, and click submit. Using an FTP client is a little different. An FTP client, such as FTP Wanderer, is an independant program on your computer that access your server and upload files to it.

  Upload
Moving a file from your system to the internet is called "uploading".

  URL
URL stand for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is an address for a resource on the internet. When you look at the URL bar at the top of a screen, you see something like:

http://www.myjadedreality.com/x_design/designguide/intro/websiteterms.php

That is the URL for this page, by the way. Every file on the internet has a unique URL. If you right click on the title at the top of this page, and select properties on the menu, you'll get a popop screen. You'll see "Address (URL)" and beside it, you'd see this:

http://www.myjadedreality.com/x_design/designguide/images/title.gif

That is the URL of that banner image. Any file or page that has been uploaded to the internet has a unique url.