Priory Development - Affordable web design and development - website's @ sensible prices.

There are many terms used when describing websites, and to non-technical people these can be very confusing and daunting!
Here is a brief description of the most common terms.

Host and Hosting: A website must be stored on a 'server' or computer that is permanently online so that members of the public can access your site. The organisation owning the server is your host and will normally charge a fee for keeping your site up and running. URL: Uniform Resource Locator. All requests made to a web server need to request something. A URL is that something, and represents an object somewhere on your server, that is accessible to the remote user. Domain Name: the URL for your site. Domain names usually have the form www.anything with the suffix .co.uk or .com or .org. A domain name must be registered and cannot be the same as any already registered domain name. ISP: Internet Service Provider. This is the company that gives you access to the Internet. Your computer dials in to the ISP using the telephone line (or cable connection in some areas). You are then connected to the ISP's computer or server, which is connected to the Internet. Search Engine: A website that has a massive index of Internet sites enabling users to search for the type of site they are looking for. Search Engines once indexed site-using keywords entered into the site by the developer, but many are now capable of indexing the site from its content alone. Visit: A visit is when some remote site makes a request for a page from your site for the first time. Hits: Hits are requests for pages or elements of pages on your site. There are always many more hits than visits and one visit can result in many requests for pages or parts of pages as the visitor browses your site. Site Submission: In order for a Search Engine to present your site to browsers on the web, it must be indexed. Submitting your site to the search engines is the trigger for the site to be indexed and held in that Search Engine's directory (though it is not a guarantee that this will happen!) Site Ranking: With so much information on the Internet, Search Engines 'rank' sites according to certain criteria they hold. For your site to be found, your site needs to be ranked so that it is presented on the first two or three pages of information returned.