Module 12 Web Development

Chapter 12

website plan

A detailed plan for a website that includes the purpose, audience, content, structure, navigation system, visual design, and publishing and maintenance strategy. Also called a design plan.

Goals

The results a website creator wants the website to accomplish within a specific time frame.

Objectives

A method a website creator uses to accomplish the website’s goals.

purpose statement

A formal, written summary of a website’s goals and objectives.

call-to-action

A suggestion or offer that requires the website visitor to interact with the website.

target audience profile

A research-based overview that includes information about potential website visitors’ demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Demographic characteristics

Characteristics that describe a website’s visitors, including gender, age group, educational level, income, location, and other characteristics.

Psychographic characteristics

Characteristics that describe a website’s visitors, including social group affiliations, lifestyle choices, purchasing preferences, and political affiliations.

user interface

A collective term for all the ways the user interacts with a software program.

landing page

The page that a browser navigates to when a user clicks an ad, email message, or other online promotion from a different website.

Value-added content

Information that is relevant, informative, and timely; accurate and of high quality; and usable.

Dynamically generated content

Content that updates periodically and can appear on a website’s pages when triggered by a specific event.

Search engine optimization

Tools to allow search engines to better find or index the user’s website.

Meta tags

In web publications, HTML specification tags that tell search engines what data to use.

storyboard

A series of pages originally developed to present scenes graphically for a movie or television program used to plan a website’s structure.

flowchart

A diagram that shows steps or processes and is used to determine the path users will take to find a website’s subsidiary pages.

target

When creating hyperlinks, the document, webpage, or place in the same document to which the hyperlink connects.

navigation menu

A list of related links.

website search feature

A popular navigation tool for websites with multiple pages.

hosted website search provider

A third-party company that uses spiders or other tools to build a searchable index of a website’s pages and hosts the index on their servers.

usability test

A formal website evaluation that generally takes place in a structured environment, such as a testing laboratory.

Eye-tracking

A type of study that uses various technologies to analyze the movement of visitors’ eyes as they view a webpage.

heat maps

An analytical tool that uses color to represent data.

F-pattern

A type of heat map that suggests website visitors typically look at the top of the page and then scan from left to right, then move down slightly and scan again from left to right, then look from the top to the bottom of the left side of the page.

text editor

Program like Notepad in Windows or TextEdit in macOS that can be used for entering programming code; like a word processing program, but lacks most text formatting features, such as fonts, colors, margins, and paragraphs.

HTML editor

A text editor enhanced with special features that easily insert HTML tags and their attributes.

markup language

A coding system that uses tags to provide instructions about the appearance, structure, and formatting of a document.

web template

A predesigned model webpage that can be customized for fast website or webpage creation.

website builder

A tool used to create professional looking websites, by dragging and dropping predefined elements to their desired locations on a page without coding.

content management system

Software that lets a group of users maintain and publish content of all kinds, but especially for websites. A tool used to create a blog or website that the user usually installs or manage on their web server.

content repository

A database that stores templates, style sheets, and other frequently used website content elements.

widget

An object, such as a web app, that is embedded in a webpage and provides access to resources that are stored elsewhere.

plug-in

Third-party program that extends the built-in functionality of an application or browser.

script

Programming code that performs a series of commands and can be embedded in a webpage.

JavaScript

A popular language for writing scripts that run in the user’s browser to control a webpage’s behavior and often make it interactive.

client-side scripts

Script that runs in the user’s browser to control a webpage’s behavior and often make it interactive; usually written in JavaScript.

Extensible Markup Language

An open source markup language mainly used to identify and share data across a wide range of applications.

attributes

In web coding, additional information needed to completely specify a tag.

Headings

A webpage element used to indicate different sections of a webpage.

external links

Link to another website.

Relative references

Identifies the location of webpages and files in the current website.

Absolute references

A reference that identifies the location of resources from another website, using the full path, including the protocol and domain name containing the webpage.

Unordered lists

A collection of items displayed in a list format, with each list item preceded by a bullet symbol.

Ordered lists

A list in which each list item is preceded by a number by default.

embed

To place a copy of an object created in a source file into a destination file so that a one-way connection to the source program becomes part of the destination file; the user can then edit the embedded object using the source program.

deprecated

In HTML, describes an older tag whose continued use is discouraged because newer techniques have been created to accomplish the same result.

embedded styles

Style that applies to all tags of one type on a webpage.

inline style

In HTML, a style attribute of most HTML tags.

font family

A group of related fonts.

Secure Sockets Layer

A protocol that is the predecessor to TLS (Transport Layer Security) and often is used to refer to TLS.

non-fungible token

A certified, unique data file associated with a digital file.

memes

Video clips, animated GIFs, or digital images, often with humorous text added, that are spread by Internet users.

domain registrar

An organization that sells and manages web domain names.

Uptime

A measure of the percent of time a website is “up” or online; indicator of a web host’s reliability.

Web analytics

A set of measurements that helps the user to understand how people use their website.

click path

The sequence of pages or activities a user performs on a website. Also called a clickstream.

clickstream

The sequence of pages or activities a user performs on a website. Also called a click path.

Sticky content

Website content that encourages users to spend long periods of time engaging and encourages them to return for future visits.

Impressions

The number of times an ad is visible to users on a webpage, regardless of whether the user clicks or interacts with the ad.

click-through

The rate measuring the number of times users click an ad to go to a sponsor’s website.

local computer

The computer storing files to publish to a server using an FTP client.

remote web server

A web server on the Internet.

affiliate agreement

Contract with a vendor that specifies that the website owner receives commission on any sales generated by users of the website.

Web Accessibility Initiative

An organization that consists of groups of users and developers who create guidelines about usage, tools and education regarding web accessibility.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Guidelines developed by the WAI to ensure that all website visitors can access content on webpages.