Basic Terminology

Webmaster - Person who maintains the website
Web Designer - Person who has a graphic design background and designs the website and codes the front-end.
Web Developer - Person who has a technical background and codes the back-end (database).
Content Writer - Person who writes content suited for the desired audience of your website.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEM - Search Engine Marketing
PPC - Pay Per Click

Domain Name/URL - The part that follows the "www" in a website address.
Domain Name Hosting - Where a domain name is registered, can be same place as where website is hosted.

HTML/XHTML - Core language of a web page
PHP, ASP, ColdFusion - Scripting languages that must reside on hosting server.
JavaScript - Scripting language that is web server independent.
CCS - Cascading Style Sheets - keep pages uniform by having the styles in a central place.
WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get - Visual editor to create and modify a web page (Dreamweaver, FrontPage).

Web 1.0 - The websites where the user gets information from a website.
Web 2.0 - The websites that allow user interaction on the website (Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, Utube).

Open Source Software - Software developed by the commmunity and is free to everyone to use as well as contribute additions. Support is through public forums and user groups.

Static Site - Known as also a brochure site. Contains basic information about company and needs to be changed by someone who knows HTML.

Content Management Systems(CMS) - Tool that allows owner of website to change content of website without changint the code.
Types of CMS tools:

• WordPress - popular blogging tool used now to build websites than can be maintained by website owner. Often a developer is needed to customize template.
• Joomla - another open source CMS tool. Often a developer is needed for initial set up and to customize.
• Drupal _ another open source CMS tool considerd by many developers the most robust from hacking. Often a developer is needed for initial set up and to customize.
• Custom - coded by hand by a developer. Is the most versaltile and more expensive option.

Hosting Terms

Features to look for in a shared hosting environment (suitable for most small websites):

Space - If you have large files, lots of graphic or videos you will needs lots of space.
Bandwidth - If you anticipate lots of downloads of large files you will need more.
Web stats - Tracks traffic on website (ex. urchin, webstats, google analytics).
Database - Used in conjunction with a Content Management System (CMS) tool or for data capturing (information on a form, signup to get on mail list etc.).

Linix Server - Generally used in conjunction with PHP and MySQL.
Microsoft Server - Generally used with ASP/ASP.NET and MS SQL Server or MS Access.

These definitions are just a guide to help novice web users with some common terms and not meant to be comprehensive.