Technology Glossary
Keeping up with the latest technology is a challenge. Here's a list of terms you often see, but may not quite understand. As you find more, simply forward them to us and we'll post their definitions.
Buttons in most browsers' Tool Button Bar, upper left.
BACK returns you to the document previously viewed. FORWARD goes to the next document, after you go BACK.
If it seems like the BACK button does not work, check if you are in a new browser window; some Web pages are programmed to open a new window when you click on links. Each window has its own short-term search HISTORY. If this does not work, right click on the BACK button to select the page you want (some Web pages are programmed to disable BACK).
Impact of Free Papers: In more recent web design, programmers try not to require viewers to use their Back button to return to previous pages and include a "Back to .... " button on each page. This is often easier for viewers to use.
A blog (short for "web log") is a type of web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal (or log) for an individual or business.
Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. Blog software usually has an archive of old blog postings. Many blogs can be searched for terms in the archive. Blogs have become a vibrant, fast-growing medium for communication in professional, poltical, news, trendy, and other specialized web communities. Many blogs provide RSS feeds, to which one can subscribe and receive alerts to new postings in selected blogs.
Impact on Free Papers: A blog is a great way to continually update viewers on new trends, business offerings, and relevant information. Including a daily blog as part of your overall website will keep people interested in new, fresh information rather than always seeing the same old presentation.
A blog is used to present information that is very time sensitive. Therefore, your blog should list the most recent posts at the top and roll backward in time.
Browsers allow users to store direct links to sites they return to often.
Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox use the term Bookmarks. The equivalent in Internet Explorer (IE) is called a "Favorite." To create a bookmark, click on BOOKMARKS or FAVORITES, then ADD. Or left-click on and drag the little bookmark icon to the place you want a new bookmark filed. To visit a bookmarked site, click on BOOKMARKS and select the site from the list.
Impact on Free Papers: Getting users to bookmark your home page increases the likelihood that they will return often. You are only one click away no matter where they are on the Internet. Many websites have a link on their home page that says, "Bookmark this site". This automatically inserts your site as a bookmark on their computer making it easy for the novice user.
Even better is getting a user to select your site as their "home" page. Again, a link on your website can make this a "one click" procedure assisting the novice user.
Boolean logic, named for mathematician George Boole, allows a user to combine terms using "operators" such as "AND," "OR," "AND NOT" and sometimes "NEAR." AND requires all terms appear in a record. OR retrieves records with either term. AND NOT excludes terms. Parentheses may be used to sequence operations and group words. Always enclose terms joined by OR with parentheses.
This is usually available in search engine search fields.
Impact on Free Papers: Many websites have extensive search capabilities allowing your viewers to find information on your website quickly and efficiently. Providing Boolean logic in your search will allow the expert user to more effectively use your site, thereby, increasing the likelihood that they will return.
To follow links in a page, to shop around in a page, exploring what's there, a bit like window shopping. The opposite of browsing a page is searching it. When you search a page, you find a search box, enter terms, and find all occurrences of the terms throughout the site. When you browse, you have to guess which words on the page pertain to your interests. Searching is usually more efficient, but sometimes you find things by browsing that you might not find because you might not think of the "right" term to search by.
Impact on Free Papers: In print, most of our readers will at least page through our entire publication and may see a well designed ad of interest. That may occur even if they were initially looking for something entirely different.
Online, people follow links, both within your site and to external sites. Creating links to help your viewers find what they want quickly will help them and create a better viewer experience. Anything you can do to make your site more efficient will increase the likelihood that they will return to your site often.
Browsers are software programs that enable you to view WWW documents. They "translate" HTML-encoded files into the text, images, sounds, and other features you see. Microsoft Internet Explorer (called simply IE), Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, and Opera are examples of "graphical" browsers that enable you to view text and images and many other WWW features.
Impact on Free Papers: While most html is handled the same regardless of which browser your viewer is using, they are not exactly the same. This means you need to test your site in each browser to make sure the presentation is appropriate.
In browsers, "cache" is used to identify a space where web pages you have visited are stored in your computer. A copy of documents you retrieve is stored in cache. When you use GO, BACK, or any other means to revisit a document, the browser first checks to see if it is in cache and will retrieve it from there because it is much faster than retrieving it from the server.
Impact on Free Papers: The cache allows viewers to move around your site much more quickly as previously viewed pages are still stored on their computers and returning to those pages does not require their computer to request another copy from your server. However, in the case of websites where they are entering information (i.e., ordering classified ads online) a cache can destroy the flow of information.
You should program pages that could be inapropriately handled by a cache to deny that ability. Otherwise, the cache is your best friend.
In search results from Google, Yahoo! Search, and some other search engines, there is usually a Cached link which allows you to view the version of a page that the search engine has stored in its database. The live page on the web might differ from this cached copy, because the cached copy dates from whenever the search engine's spider last visited the page and detected modified content. Use the cached link to see when a page was last crawled and, in Google, where your terms are and why you got a page when all of your search terms are not in it.
Impact on Free Papers: You should check the search engines on a regular basis to see how your pages are being portrayed. You want to make sure they have you latest information available. If not, a change in programming will often trigger their spider to once again refresh their informationl.
Capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case. Most search tools are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names. It is always safe to key all lower case (no capitals), because lower case will always retrieve upper case.
Impact on Free Papers: Most viewers are used to working with sites that are not case sensitive. Unless security is an important aspect, you should consider using case insensitive passwords for your viewer's ease.
A cookies is a message from a WEB SERVER computer, sent to and stored by your browser on your computer.
When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents. The main use for cookies is to provide customized Web pages according to a profile of your interests. When you log onto a "customize" type of invitation on a Web page and fill in your name and other information, this may result in a cookie on your computer which that Web page will access to appear to "know" you and provide what you want. If you fill out these forms, you may also receive e-mail and other solicitation independent of cookies.
Impact of Free Papers: Often your viewers will want to automatically be logged into your site when they return, thereby bypassing entering their username and password. This is accomplished by placing a cookie on their computer then they originally registered for your site. Additionally, if there is an ability for them to customize how your site looks, this information also will be stored on their computer in the form of a cookie.
Some users will deny access to storing cookies due to their abuse by some programmers and websites.
A Google service in which individuals can create a Google account (free) and create a search engine directed to search within up to 5,000 URLs or websites they select. More information at CSEs: Make Your Own Search Engine and Finding CSEs.
Impact on Free Papers: As the Internet develops more tools are becoming available for users to "personalize" their experience. Using tools to improve their Internet experience, users habits will become rigid and difficult to change. This makes development of your website a critical issue.
Hierarchical scheme for indicating logical and sometimes geographical venue of a web-page from the network. In the US, common domains are .edu (education), .gov (government agency), .net (network related), .com (commercial), .org (nonprofit and research organizations). Outside the US, domains indicate country: ca (Canada), uk (United Kingdom), au (Australia), jp (Japan), fr (France), etc. Neither of these lists is exhaustive.
Impact on Free Papers: You should choose your domain name carefully. As a US company, you will normally want to register your domain.com address. You may also want to register domain.net and domain.org as a way of protecting those addresses.
Any of these terms refers to the initial part of a URL, down to the first /, where the domain and name of the host or SERVER computer are listed (most often in reversed order, name first, then domain). The domain name gives you who "published" a page, made it public by putting it on the Web.
A domain name is translated in huge tables standardized across the Internet into a numeric IP address unique to the host computer sought. These tables are maintained on computers called "Domain Name Servers." Whenever you ask the browser to find an URL, the browser must consult the table on the domain name server that particular computer is networked to consult.
"Domain Name Server entry" frequently appears a browser error message when you try to enter an URL. If this lookup fails for any reason, the "lacks DNS entry" error occurs. The most common remedy is simply to try the URL again, when the domain name server is less busy, and it will find the entry (the corresponding numeric IP address).
Impact on Free Papers: All of this normally happens in the background without your intervention. However, you must register your domain name for Internet users to find your website and you must create a DNS entry on the registrar's computer. However, once done, it usually can be forgotten unless you move your website to another hosting company.
To copy something from a primary source to a more peripheral one, as in saving something found on the Web (currently located on its server) to diskette or to a file on your local hard drive.
Impact on Free Papers: Most likely your website will include the ability for users to save information on their local computers. This is usually done by "download" links on your website using the FTP protocol. Making the process simple is very important as any level of frustration will drive users away from your site.
In Windows, DOS and some other operating systems, one or several letters at the end of a filename. Filename extensions usually follow a period (dot) and indicate the type of file. For example, this.txt denotes a plain text file, that.htm or that.html denotes an HTML file. Some common image extensions are picture.jpg or picture.jpeg or picture.bmp or picture.gif.
Impact on Free Papers: Most file extensions are automatically created by the programs that create the file; thereby making this of little concern. However, if you use proprietary software on your website, you will need to assure that files that are downloaded by your users can be used by their software or that appropriate software is easy to download and install.
A common example is that most sites that have pdf documents available for download, also include a link to www.adobe.com where Acrobat Reader can be downloaded and installed for free.
A software package that enables you to easily read the XML code in which RSS feeds are written. Bloglines is currently the most popular feed reader but there are many competitors.
Impact on Free Papers: Many users are looking for RSS feeds as a way to keep track of what is new on your site. These are your most interested users and you want to do everything you can to keep them abreast of your new developments. Make sure your RSS feeder sends information that is compatible with all the standard feed readers.
Tool in most browsers to search for word(s) keyed in document in screen only. Useful to locate a term in a long document. Can be invoked by the keyboard command, Ctrl+F.
Impact on Free Papers: Since most web browsers handle this automatically, there is little need to change your website to accomodate this user feature.
Freshness measures how up-to-date a search engine database is and is based primarily on how often its spiders recirculate around the Web and update their copies of the web pages they hold, and discover new ones. Also determined by how quickly they integrate new sites that web authors send to them. Two weeks is about as good as most search engines do, but some update certain selected web sites more frequently, even daily.
Impact on Free Papers: Make sure you notify the search engines as soon as your site goes live. This can speed the process of being listed in their search engine results.
A format for web documents that divides the screen into segments, each with a scroll bar as if it were as "window" within the window. Usually, selecting a category of documents in one frame shows the contents of the category in another frame. To go BACK in a frame, position the cursor in the frame an press the right mouse button, and select "Back in frame" (or Forward).
You can adjust frame dimensions by positioning the cursor over the border between frames and dragging the border up/down or right/left holding the mouse button down over the border.
Impact on Free Papers: Using Frames to design web page layouts has been replaced by CSS; however, there are still a few web sites still using Frames. If you are re-designing or designing your site, you should use CSS to layout the page format rather than frames.
File Transfer Protocol is the ability to transfer rapidly entire files from one computer to another, intact for viewing or other purposes.
Impact of Free Papers: FTP should be used whenever you ask a user to upload or download a sizable file (photos, large pdf files, etc.)
In ranking of results, documents with all terms (Boolean AND) are ranked first, followed by documents containing any terms (Boolean OR) are retrieved. The farther down, the fewer the terms, although at least one should always be present.
Impact on Free Papers: Since this user feature is outside of your control, there is little impact on your website.
Discussion forums one can participate in, share ideas with, and form community. Most are free and some are open to new members. Yahoo Groups and Google Groups are both popular. Google Groups includes the former Usenet Newsgroups. Blogs are replacing some of the need for this type of community sharing and information exchange.
Impact on Free Papers: You should make extensive use of groups within your community website. You should allow users to create groups, join groups and personalize their website experience.
Groups are an excellent way for people with similar interests to gather and interact through your site.
The top portion of the HTML source code behind Web pages, beginning with <HEAD> and ending with </HEAD>. It contains the Title, Description, Keywords fields and others that web page authors may use to describe the page. The title appears in the title bar of most browsers, but the other fields cannot be seen as part of the body of the page. To view the <HEAD> portion of web pages in your browser, click VIEW, Page Source. In Internet Explorer, click VIEW, Source. Some search engines will retrieve based on text in these fields.
Impact on Free Papers: Much of the functionality of your page is programmed in the header section. In addition, meta-tags (keywords) can be embedded in the header section that will describe your page to search engines allowing you to obtain higher ranking in their results.
Available by using the combined keystrokes CTRL + H. You can set how many days your browser retains history in Edit | Preferences, or in Tools | Options.
Impact on Free Papers: This browser feature is outside your control, so there is little impact on your site.
The physical computer that is connected to the Internet and serves web-documents to clients or users.
Impact on Free Papers: Most companies have their websites hosted by outside companies to make use of their server administration and maintenance capabilities. Making sure you select a host that has adequate bandwidth and uptime history is very important. Otherwise, your users may find that your site is down or very slow. This will degrade their user experience and drive them away.
Hypertext Markup Language is a standardized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents (and possibly other applications such as sound or motion), and formatting instructions for display on the screen. When you view a Web page, you are looking at the product of this code working behind the scenes in conjunction with your browser. Browsers are programmed to interpret HTML for display.
HTML often imbeds within it other programming languages and applications such as SGML, XML, Javascript, CGI-script and more. It is possible to deliver or access and execute virtually any program via the WWW.
You can see HTML by selecting the View pop-down menu tab, then "Document Source."
Impact on Free Papers: HTML is standardized throughout the web, although the language is constantly evolving. Most HTML sites written in very early versions of HTML will still work, but xHTML has become the new standard. Older sites will need to be rewritten before support for these previous versions is dropped by most browsers.
Most websites also make sure of Server Side programming languages and databases. The most common combination are PHP and MySQL, both of which are free open source software languages.
On the World Wide Web, the feature, built into HTML, that allows a text area, image, or other object to become a "link" (as if in a chain) that retrieves another computer file (another Web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the Internet. The range of possibilities is limited by the ability of the computer retrieving the outside file to view, play, or otherwise open the incoming file. It needs to have software that can interact with the imported file. Many software capabilities of this type are built into browsers or can be added as "plug-ins."
Impact on Free Papers: Users are very adept at linking from one site to another and expect that you will provide hypertext links to allow them to easily move from one area of your site to another, or to outside sites, for more information and additional services. You should review your site to assure that you make your site as easy to navigate as possible.
The vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60's and early 70's. An "internet" (lower case i) is any computers connected to each other (a network), and are not part of the Internet unless the use TCP/IP protocols. An "intranet" is a private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a network.
Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP address. If a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.
(Internet Protocol number or address). A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 165.113.245.2. Numbers within each part can range from 0 to 255.
Impact on Free Papers: Generally, the hosting company will maintain the IP address for your website and/or the computer which hosts your website. Once set up, it generally does not need to be changed unless you switch hosting companies.
A company that sells Internet connections via modem (i.e., AOL, PeoplePC). Faster, broadband Internet connectivity is available via cable, satellite, DSL or T1 lines.
Impact on Free Papers: While many users are connecting through broadband connections allowing much richer media to be moved to their screens very quickly, there are still millions of users dialing into the Internet through much slower speeds.
You need to be aware of the user experience of your viewers who are dialing into the Internet on slow speeds. Often, options are available to the user to select versions of your website that bypass video and other rich media that downloads extremely slow on dial-up speeds.
A network-oriented programming language invented by Sun Microsystems that is specifically designed for writing programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to our computer or files. Using small Java programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as animations, calculators, and other fancy tricks. We can expect to see a huge variety of features added to the Web using Java, since you can write a Java program to do almost anything a regular computer program can do, and then include that Java program in a Web page.
Impact on Free Papers: Java is widely used on the web and will continue to increase. You can program Java Applets into your website and be assured that nearly every user will be able to operate the Applet on their computer. Applets are very useful when users need to do more extensive information processing than simply entering data is a simple form. An example would be entering a classified ad into your front-end system through your website. This often requires more than one screen and processing information before submitting the entire package to your server.
A simple programming language developed by Netscape to enable greater interactivity in Web pages. It shares some characteristics with JAVA but is independent. It interacts with HTML, enabling dynamic content and motion.
Impact on Free Papers: Javascript is widely used to provide simple animation on websites and its use will continue to increase. You can rest assured that nearly every user that visits your website will be able to process javascript functions.
Strangely, Java and Javascript, which are similar in application are not connected in any way other than a similar name.
The accordian function that moves these panels is a javascript function.
A word searched for in a search command. Keywords are searched in any order. Use spaces to separate keywords in simple keyword searching. To search keywords exactly as keyed (in the same order), see PHRASE.
Impact on Free Papers: Nearly every user who visits your site will be used to doing keyword searches, so you should provide this facility to allow users to find information quickly and efficiently.
Requiring that a keyword or phrase appear in a specific field of documents retrieved. Most often used to limit to the "Title" field in order to find documents primarily about one or more keywords. (Can be used for other fields. See the table summarizing search tools features.)
Impact on Free Papers: Users may want to search only the title of articles or the entire text. Allowing them to select how a search operates on your website will improve their user experience.
The URL imbedded in another document, so that if you click on the highlighted text or button referring to the link, you retrieve the outside URL. If you search the field "link:", you retrieve on text in these imbedded URLs which you do not see in the documents.
Impact of Free Paper: Users are very adept at linking from one page to another. You should provide extensive links to allow users to find whatever they need quickly and efficiently.
Term used to describe the frustrating and frequent problem caused by the constant changing in URLs. A Web page or search tool offers a link and when you click on it, you get an error message (e.g., "not available") or a page saying the site has moved to a new URL. Search engine spiders cannot keep up with the changes. URLs change frequently because the documents are moved to new computers, the file structure on the computer is reorganized, or sites are discontinued. If there is no referring link to the new URL, there is little you can do but try to search for the same or an equivalent site from scratch.
Impact on Free Papers: While you cannot control the links search engines provide to users, you can test and double-test the links on your site to assure that they are working. Update or delete those links that are no longer valid to assure that your users do not suffer Link Rot.
A discussion group mechanism that permits you to subscribe and receive and participate in discussions via e-mail. Blogs and RSS feeds provide some of the communication functionality of listservers.
Impact on Free Papers: Listservers have been around for a long time and most users have seen and/or used them in the past. The Free Paper Forum is an example of a listserver created for free paper professionals.
As you design your community site, you will want to create listserver services to your users.
Search engines that automatically submit your keyword search to several other search tools, and retrieve results from all their databases. Convenient time-savers for relatively simple keyword searches (one or two keywords or phrases in " "). See Meta-Search Engines page for complete descriptions and examples.
Impact on Free Papers: Since these websites refer to search engines, there is little you can do to impact how they operate.
The Mobile Web refers to access to the World Wide Web using a mobile device such as cell phones, PDAs, and other portable gadgets connected to a public network. Such access does not require a desktop computer, nor a fixed landline connection. Services on the Mobile Web can include capabilities that do not exist on the traditional Internet, such as SMS text messaging. However, Mobile Web access today still suffers from interoperability and usability problems. This is partly due to the small physical size of the screens of mobile devices and partly due to the incompatibility of many mobile devices with the format of much of the information available on the Internet.
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_website
Impact on free papers: More people are using mobile devices to access the web. Experts predict that this trend will continue until nearly everyone has a mobile device capable of accessing your web site. You need to assure that your site is "mobile Web Friendly". This means having special formats that are presented to mobile devices to allow easy navigation and interaction with your site on a very small screen.
A term used in Boolean searching to indicate the sequence in which operations are to be performed. Enclosing words in parentheses identifies a group or "nest." Groups can be within other groups. The operations will be performed from the innermost nest to the outmost, and then from left to right.
Impact on Free Papers: Most search functions allow Boolean operations.
A discussion group operated through the Internet. Not to be confused with LISTSERVERS which operate through e-mail.
Impact on Free Papers: Newsgroups are often used to allow users to "subscribe" to your online news.
When you retrieve a document via the WWW, the document is sent in "packets" which fit in between other messages on the telecommunications lines, and then are reassembled when they arrive at your end. This occurs using TCP/IP protocol. The packets may be sent via different paths on the networks which carry the Internet. If any of these packets gets delayed, your document cannot be reassembled and displayed. This is called a "packet jam." You can often resolve packet jams by pressing STOP then RELOAD. RELOAD requests a fresh copy of the document, and it is likely to be sent without jamming.
Impact on Free Papers: You need to assure that your hosting company has adequate bandwidth to handle the traffic on your website.
Abbreviation for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems, that is used to capture almost any kind of document with the formatting in the original. Viewing a PDF file requires Acrobat Reader, which is built into most browsers and can be downloaded free from Adobe.
Impact on Free Papers: Many users will want to download (and/or print) information from your website. Pdf files are the easiest to use. They are small, universally accepted and can be processed with Acrobat Reader, a free program that can be downloaded and installed on any computer quickly.
A web page created by an individual (as opposed to someone creating a page for an institution, business, organization, or other entity). Often personal pages contain valid and useful opinions, links to important resources, and significant facts. One of the greatest benefits of the Web is the freedom it as given almost anyone to put his or her ideas "out there." But frequently personal pages offer highly biased personal perspectives or ironical/satirical spoofs, which must be evaluated carefully. The presence in the page's URL of a personal name (such as "jbarker") and a ~ or % or the word "users" or "people" or "members" very frequently indicate a site offering personal pages.
Impact on Free Papers: Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn have created entire business franchises from allowing people to create personal pages. As you create your personal site, you should consider whether you can provide that ability to your users, or how you can link their personal pages to your site allowing people in your community to network within your website.
More than one KEYWORD, searched exactly as keyed (all terms required to be in documents, in the order keyed). Enclosing keywords in quotations " " forms a phrase in AltaVista, , and some other search tools. Some times a phrase is called a "character string."
Impact on Free Papers: You should incorporate phrase search capabilities in your website as some users will seek to use it.
An application built into a browser or added to a browser to enable it to interact with a special file type (such as a movie, sound file, Word document, etc.)
Impact on Free Papers: Some plug-ins, such as Java, Javascript and Flash, are widely used and generally already installed on users' computers. However, other plug-ins, while useful, may not be as widely installed. When a user hits something on your website that requires installation of a plug-in, most browsers will automatically ask the user if they want to install the plug-in, and, if approved, install it. However, some users are suspicious of programs automatically installed on their computers and will deny that installation. That will cause your web page to fail.
If you use rich media, it is best to limit it to Java, Javascript and Flash to minimize the chance that your users will have to install another plug-in.
A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers.
The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting.
The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasts
Impact on Free Papers: Increasingly people are looking to audio and video formats to receive information rather than reading. Podcasts can be your method of reaching people in these formats. This may be used for advertising or news content and can usually be distributed through your website or commercial distribution services (i.e., iTunes).
Some search engines rank the order in which search results appear primarily by how many other sites link to each page (a kind of popularity vote based on the assumption that other pages would create a link to the "best" pages). Google is the best example of this. See also Subject-Based Ranking.
Impact on Free Papers: Search Engine Optimization is as much an art as a science. However, the payoffs are increased popularity in search listings greatly increasing the chances that users will visit your site.
Insert + immediately before a term (no space) to limit search to documents containing a term. Insert - immediately before a term (no space) to exclude documents containing a term. This can be used immediately (no space) before the " " delimiting a phrase.
Functions partially like basic BOOLEAN LOGIC. If + precedes more than one term, they are required as with Boolean AND. If - is used, terms are excluded as with Boolean AND NOT. If neither + no - is used, the default if Boolean OR. However, full Boolean logic allows parentheses to group and sequence logical operations, and +/- do not.
Impact on Free Papers: This a function of search engines which do not allow much control by you.
The most common method for determining the order in which search results are displayed. Each search tool uses its own unique algorithm. Most use "fuzzy and" combined with factors such as how often your terms occur in documents, whether they occur together as a phrase, and whether they are in title or how near the top of the text. Popularity is another ranking system.
Impact on Free Papers: Anything you can do to increase the relevancy of your web site will improve your search engine results.
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.
The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:
- Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
- RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
- Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91).
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
Impact on Free Papers: RSS allows your readers to subscribe to automatic notification of updates on your website. This is an excellent opportunity to "push" your news and advertising information to those readers who have "subscribed". These are prime readers who are interested in instant updates on your information.
A script is a type of programming language that can be used to fetch and display Web pages. There are may kinds and uses of scripts on the Web. They can be used to create all or part of a page, and communicate with searchable databases. Forms (boxes) and many interactive links, which respond differently depending on what you enter, all require some kind of script language. When you find a question mark (?) in the URL of a page, some kind of script command was used in generating and/or delivering that page. Most search engine spiders are instructed not to crawl pages from scripts, although it is usually technically possible for them to do so (see Invisible Web for more information).
Impact on Free Papers: There are many scripting languages and nearly all dynamic web sites use a scripting language. PHP and ASP are two of the most popular.
A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Also called HOST computer. Web servers are the closest equivalent to what in the print world is called the "publisher" of a print document. An important difference is that most print publishers carefully edit the content and quality of their publications in an effort to market them and future publications. This convention is not required in the Web world, where anyone can be a publisher; careful evaluation of Web pages is therefore mandatory. Also called a "Host."
Something that operates on the "server" computer (providing the Web page), as opposed to the "client" computer (which is you or someone else viewing the Web page). Usually it is a program or command or procedure or other application causes dynamic pages or animation or other interaction.
Impact on Free Papers: Server side applications allow databases to serve information to web pages very quickly. This has become the standard design for such web pages. This will most likely be used in any database driven web page, such as classified search or news search.
This term is often used to mean "web page," but there is supposed to be a difference. A web page is a single entity, one URL, one file that you might find on the Web. A "site," properly speaking, is an location or gathering or center for a bunch of related pages linked to from that site. All of the pages associated with it branch out from there -- the web searching tutorial and all its pages, and more. Together they make up a "site." When we estimate there are 5 billion web pages on the Web, we do not mean "sites." There would be far fewer sites.
Impact on Free Papers: Your paper will have a site that includes a collection of web pages.
Short Message Service (SMS) is a communications protocol allowing the interchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices. SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers sending and receiving text messages on their phones. The SMS technology has facilitated the development and growth of text messaging. The connection between the phenomenon of text messaging and the underlying technology is so great that in parts of the world the term "SMS" is used as a synonym for a text message or the act of sending a text message, even when a different protocol is being used.
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service
Impact on Free Papers: Text messaging has become the primary communication device of a large number of people. If you have a teenage child, you know how prevalent this communication has become. Often your readers and advertisers would rather receive text messages than email. You should consider making text messages an option rather than email notifications of ad renewals, news or other information. Just remember that SMS is generally limited to 160 characters.
Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as "crawlers" or "knowledge-bots" or "knowbots" that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep the search engine database of web pages up to date. They obtain new pages, update known pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into the "home" database.
Most large search engines operate several robots all the time. Even so, the Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders to cover it, resulting in a certain degree of "out-of-datedness" (link rot) in all the search engines.
Impact on Free Papers: Web pages can be designed to more easily searched. You should incorporate these design techniques so search engines can keep their entries up to date.
Many Web pages have organizations, businesses, institutions like universities or nonprofit foundations, or other interests which "sponsor" the page. Frequently you can find a link titled "Sponsors" or an "About us" link explaining who or what (if anyone) is sponsoring the page. Sometimes the advertisers on the page (banner ads, links, buttons to sites that sell or promote something) are "sponsors." WHY is this important? Sponsors and the funding they provide may, or may not, influence what can be said on the page or site -- can bias what you find, by excluding some opposing viewpoint or causing some other imbalanced information. The site is not bad because of sponsors, but you they should alert you to the need to evaluate a page or site very carefully.
Impact on Free Papers: Clearly identify your company as the owner (sponsor) of your web site. Also, clearly identify ads as such so users can be assured that they understand the purpose of all information.
SSI stands for "server-side include," a type of HTML instruction telling a computer that serves Web pages to dynamically generate data, usually by inserting certain variable contents into a fixed template or boilerplate Web page. Used especially in database searches.
Impact on Free Papers: Server Side Includes are commonly used to present database information, such as classified ads or news stories, on web pages.
In keyword searching, word endings are automatically removed (lines becomes line); searches are performed on the stem + common endings (line or lines retrieves line, lines, line's, lines', lining, lined). Not very common as a practice, and not always disclosed. Can usually be avoided by placing a term in " ".
Impact on Free Papers: You can consider adding this feature to search on your site, however, it is not very common.
In database searching, "stop words" are small and frequently occurring words like and, or, in, of that are often ignored when keyed as search terms. Sometimes putting them in quotes " " will allow you to search them.
Impact on Free Papers: You should make sure that common words are dropped from search matches. Otherwise, every news story including the word "and" will be found and presented to the user.
A variation on popularity ranking in which the links in pages on the same subject are used to in ranking search results. Used by Teoma.
Impact on Free Papers: This not widely used, so you users will not expect to find this feature on your web site.
An approach to Web documents by a lexicon of subject terms hierarchically grouped. May be browsed or searched by keywords. Subject directories are smaller than other searchable databases, because of the human involvement required to classify documents by subject.
Impact on Free Papers: Not widely used.
Ability to search only within the results of a previous search. Enables you to refine search results, in effect making the computer "read" the search results for you selecting documents with terms you sub-search on.
Impact on Free Papers: Allowing users to refine a search will make finding the right classified ads or news stories much easier.
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- This is the suite of protocols that defines the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software. See also IP Address.
Impact on Free Papers: This technical area of programming is of little concern in designing and managing your site. This is the simply the protocol all computers use to communicate with the Internet.
Internet service allowing one computer to log onto another, connecting as if not remote.
Impact on Free Papers: Generally, your users will not be allowed to "log in" to one of your on-site computers. However, you may use this protocol to allow employees working off-site to connect to their computer in the office.
In some search tools, the terms you choose to search on can lead you to other terms you may not have thought of. Different search tools have different ways of presenting this information, sometimes with suggested words you may choose among and sometimes automatically. The terms are based on the terms in the results of your search, not on some dictionary-like thesaurus.
Impact on Free Papers: This is not widely used, so your users will not expect this feature on your site.
The official title of a document from the "meta" field called title. The text of this meta title field may or may not also occur in the visible body of the document. It is what appears in the top bar of the window when you display the document and it is the title that appears in search engine results. The "meta" field called title is not mandatory in HTML coding. Sometimes you retrieve a document with "No Title" as its supposed title; this is caused when the meta-title field is left blank.
In Alta Vista and some other search tools, title: search also matches on the "meta" field, which contains document descriptors not displayed on the Web. See also LIMITING TO A FIELD.
Impact on Free Papers: Make sure the page titles of your web pages are clearly descriptive so search engines can more easily classify and list your pages.
In a search, the ability to enter the first part of a keyword, insert a symbol (usually *), and accept any variant spellings or word endings, from the occurrence of the symbol forward. (E.g., femini* retrieves feminine, feminism, feminism, etc.) Which search engines have this?
Impact on Free Papers: Most users will expect this feature in your search feature. You should strongly consider including it.
Uniform Resource Locator. The unique address of any Web document. May be keyed in a browser's OPEN or LOCATION / GO TO box to retrieve a document. There is a logic the layout of a URL:
Type of file (could say http://, ftp:// or telnet://)
Domain name (computer file is on and its location on the Internet)
Path or directory on the computer to this file
Name of file, and its file extension (usually ending in .html or .htm)
Impact on Free Papers: This standard layout for locating pages and services on the Internet is outside your control.
Bulletinboard-like network featuring thousands of "newsgroups." Google incorporates the historic file of Usenet Newsgroups (bzck to 1981) into its Google Groups. Yahoo Groups offers a similar service, but does not include the old "Usenet Newsgroups." Blogs are replacing some of the need for this type of community sharing and information exchange.
Impact on Free Papers: Usenets were very popular in the early years of the Internet, but are being replaced by newer technology.
In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data. Widgets are basic visual building blocks which, combined in an application, hold all the data processed by the application and the available interactions on this data.
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget
Impact on Free Papers: Widgets are gaining use in many different environments. At first, they were most noticeable on Yahoo, Google and MSN home pages. You can insert a small window that gives you instantly updated weather on your personal web home page. Weather.com makes this widget available to allow viewers to see their information on web sites maintained by other companies or individuals.
Widgets are gaining acceptance and will become more widely used. You may start getting requests for a widget that users can put on their website that will constantly update news and advertising information. This is helpful to you as it gives your site much wider distribution.
A term meaning "quick" in Hawaiian, that is used for technology that gathers in one place a number of web pages focused on a theme, project, or collaboration. Wikis are generally used when users or group members are invited to develop, contribute, and update the content of the wiki. Wikis can be passworded in various ways to control or allow contributions. The most famous wiki is the Wikipedia.
Impact on Free Papers: Wikis are often used for "constantly changing" web pages that are maintained by a large group of people. Internal uses would include documentation on procedures, as a wiki allows for it to be constantly updated. External uses could include a community history or wikipedia.
Different word endings (such as -ing, -s, es, -ism, -ist,etc.) will be retrieved only if you allow for them in your search terms. One way to do this TRUNCATION, but few systems accept truncation. Another way is to enter the variants either separated by BOOLEAN OR (and grouped in parentheses). In +REQUIRE/-REJECT non-Boolean systems, enter the variant terms preceded with neither + nor -, because this will allow documents containing any of them to retrieved.
Impact on Free Papers: Most users are not familiar with this search technique, so they will not expect it on your site.
A variant of HTML. Stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language is a hybrid between HTML and XML that is more universally acceptable in Web pages and search engines than XML.
Impact on Free Papers: xHTML has replaced HTML as the web standard, although legacy HTML pages will still work with most browsers. However, as new sites are developed they should comply with xHTML standards.
Extensible Markup Language, a dilution for Web page use of SGML (Standard General Markup Language), which is not readily viewable in ordinary browsers and is difficult to apply to Web pages. XML is very useful (among other things) for pages emerging from databases and other applications where parts of the page are standardized and must reappear many times. See XHTML.
Impact on Free Papers: XML is becoming widely used for transfering information from one database to another. A common use for XML is transferring classified ads from one database to another.