TECH WORDS

*RSS

"Really Simple Syndication": a format for syndicating many types of content, including blog entries, torrent files, video clips on news-like sites; specifically frequently updated content on a Web site, and is also known as a type of "feed" or "aggregator". An RSS feed can contain a summary of content or the full text, and makes it easier for people to keep up to date with sites they like in an automated manner (much like e-mail). The content of the feed can be read by using software called an RSS or Feed reader. Feed readers display hyperlinks, and include other metadata (information about information) that helps people decide whether they want to read more, follow a link, or move on. The original intent of RSS is to make information come to you (via the feed reader) instead of you going out to look for it (via the Web). Programs called news aggregators permit users to view many feeds at once, providing 'push' content constantly. See Category:Feeds for Codex resources about bringing RSS feeds into WordPress. See also RDF Site Summary.

PHP

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interface

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DIV

A DIV element in HTML marks a section of text. DIVs are used extensively in WordPress to apply CSS stylings to particular blog elements.

Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet (or favelet) is a "faux" bookmark containing scripting code, usually written in JavaScript, that allows the user to perform a function.

Character Entity

A character entity is a method used to display special characters normally reserved for use in HTML. For example, the less than (<) and greater than (>) are used as part the HTML tag structure, so both symbols are reserved for that use. But, if you need to display those symbols on your site, you can use character entities. For example: use < for the less than (<) symbol use > for the greater than (>) symbol

Post Slug

A few lowercase words separated by dashes, describing a post and usually derived from the post title to create a user-friendly (that is readable and without confusing characters) permalink. Post slug substitutes the "%posttitle%" placeholder in a custom permalink structure. Post slug should not be changed and is especially useful if the post title tends to be long or changes frequently.

Query Variable

A variable passed through the query string. For example, in the query string ?category_name=tech&feed=atom, there are two query variables: category_name with a value of "tech", and feed with a value of "atom".

.htaaccess

.htaccess file is a granular configuration file for the Apache web server software, used to set or alter the server's configuration settings for the directory in which it is present, and/or its child directories. WordPress uses an .htaccess file in conjunction with the mod_rewrite Apache module to produce permalinks. Note that .htaccess is a hidden file in Unix/Linux (as dictated by the preceding period '.'), meaning it may not be visible using the default settings of some FTP clients.

Content Management System

A Content Management System, or CMS, is software for facilitating the maintenance of content, but not design, on a web site. A blogging tool is an example of a Content Management System.

Capabilities

A capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. Each user of a WordPress site might have some permissions but not others, depending on their role. For example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts (the "edit_posts" capability), but not permission to edit other users' posts (the "edit_others_posts" capability). WordPress comes with six roles and over fifty capabilities in its role-based access system. Plugins can modify the system.

Character Set

A character set is a collection of symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters), when used together, represent meaningful words in a language. Computers use an encoding scheme so members of a character set are stored with a numeric value (e.g. 0=A, 1=B, 2=C, 3=D). In addition, a collation determines the order (i.e alphabetic) to use when sorting the character set. By default, WordPress uses the Unicode UTF-8 (utf8) character set for the WordPress MySQL database tables created during the installation process. Beginning with Version 2.2, the database character set (and collation) is defined in the wp-config.php file.

Footer area

A footer area is a horizontal area provided by a theme for displaying information other than the main content of the web page. Themes may provide one or more footer areas below the content. Footer areas usually contain widgets that an administrator of the site can customize. In a theme, footer areas are generated by a template file, typically named sidebar-footer.php.

Atom

A format for syndicating content on news-like sites, viewable by Atom-aware programs called news readers or aggregators.

Boolean

A variable or expression which evaluates to either true or false.

Hack

A hack is a bit of code written to customize or extend the functionality of a software product. Older versions of WordPress used a hack-based extension system, but versions 1.2 and above of WordPress use a Plugin API with hooks for extensions.

*News reader

A news aggregator or news (feed) reader is a computer program which tracks syndicated information feeds, via RSS, RDF, or Atom. Most news aggregators allow one to 'subscribe' to a feed, and automatically keep track of the articles one has read, similar to an email client tracking read emails. Many blogs make their content available in feed form for the convenience of readers using news aggregators. WordPress can generate feeds in RSS and/or Atom formats.

Query String

A sequence of codes in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that a web page uses to determine what dynamic data to display. The query string in a URI comes after an initial question mark, and may contain several parameters separated by ampersands. WordPress uses query strings to indicate criteria to search for specific posts or sets of posts in the database. The use of query strings is generally believed to impede the indexing of dynamic pages by search engines. For this reason, it is often desirable to use a method such as mod_rewrite to reduce exposure of query strings to search engines and other site visitors.

Category

Each post in WordPress is filed under a category. Thoughtful categorization allows posts to be grouped with others of similar content and aids in the navigation of a site. Please note, the post category should not be confused with the Link Categories used to classify and manage Links.

Some ex of files formats which needed to be edited as plain text:

HTML documents PHP scripts Perl scripts Rich Text Format documents JavaScript scripts

Screen

In WordPress a screen is a web page used for managing part of a weblog (site) or network. The term 'screen' is used to avoid confusion with 'page', which has a specific and different meaning in WordPress. For example, the web page used to manage posts is known as the Posts Screen.

Filter

In WordPress, a Filter is a function that is associated with an existing Action by specifying any existing Hook. Developers can create custom Filters using the Filter API to replace code from an existing Action. This process is called "hooking". Custom Filters differ from custom Actions because custom Actions allow you to add or remove code from existing Actions. Whereas custom Filters allow you to replace specific data (such as a variable) found within an existing Action.

Tagline

a catchy phrase that describes the character or the attributes of the blog in a brief, concise manner. Think of it as the slogan, or catchline for a weblog.

Template

a file that defines an area of the web pages generated by a theme. For example, there is typically a template for the header area at the top of the web pages, a template for the content, a template for the sidebars, and so on. The templates are like building blocks that make up the complete web page.

cPanel

a popular web-based administration tool that many hosting providers provide to allow users to configure their own accounts using an easy-to-use interface.

syndication

go to RSS

Tag

is a keyword which describes all or part of a Post. Think of it like a Category, but smaller in scope. A Post may have several tags, many of which relate to it only peripherally. Like Categories, Tags are usually linked to a page which shows all Posts having the same Tag. Tags can be created on-the-fly by simply typing them into the Tag field. By default, tags can be assigned only to the Post and custom post types. Tags can also be displayed in clouds which show large numbers of Tags in various sizes, colors, etc. This allows for a sort of total perspective on the blog, allowing people to see the sort of things your blog is about most. Many people confuse Tags and Categories, but the difference is easy: Categories generally don't change often, while your Tags usually change with every Post and are closer to the topic of the Post.

ISAPA (Internet Server Application Programming Interface)

is a set of programming standards designed to allow programmers to quickly and easily develop efficient Web-based applications. Developed by Process Software and Microsoft Corporation, ISAPI is intended to replace CGI programs.

Recordset

the group of records or result returned from a database query.

Query

the process behind the scenes

Blogosphere

the subset of internet web sites which are, or relate to, blogs.

Nonce

used for security purposes to protect against unexpected or duplicate requests that could cause undesired permanent or irreversible changes to the web site and particularly to its database. Specifically, a nonce is an one-time token generated by a web site to identify future requests to that web site. When a request is submitted, the web site verifies if a previously generated nonce expected for this particular kind of request was sent along and decides whether the request can be safely processed, or an notice of failure should be returned. This could prevent unwanted repeated, expired or malicious requests from being processed. Nonce is usually included in a hidden HTML form field or as a part of an URL and therefore sent with a request by submitting a form field or visiting a link. If a request is not verified, the web site could generate a new nonce in its response and prompt the user to intentionally confirm the repetition of the request. In WordPress, the response message is "Are you sure you want to do this?" by default.

DOM

(Document Object Model) is a standard, platform-independent interface that allows programmers to dynamically access HTML and XML to control the content and structure of documents. DOM connects programming scripts to web pages.

*Unicode

A widely supported and preferred character encoding system. For a computer to display letters (or any text characters), it needs to enumerate them - create an index of characters it knows how to display. These indexes are known as character sets. This is invaluable for users hosting WordPress in a non-English language. The most widely used collections of these character sets are the iso-8859 with iso-8859-1 and iso-8859-15 (which contains the euro sign and some characters used in Dutch, French, Czech and Slovak) being the most common; they are also known as Latin1 and Latin9. These character sets use 8 bits (a single byte) for each character, allowing for 255 different characters (256, counting null). However, when considering that Latin-based languages aren't the only ones in the world (think Japanese or Hebrew), 255 characters aren't nearly enough. There is a wide index of characters known as Unicode. Unicode has so many characters that sometimes more than 16 bits (2 bytes!) are required to represent them. Furthermore, the first 127 characters of Unicode are the same as the first 127 of the most widely used character set - iso-8859-1. For this purpose, UTF, the Unicode Translation Format, was created. UTF uses different numbers of bits for characters, and allows for the entire range of Unicode to be used. What you should probably know is: UTF-8 is an 8-bit-minimum type of UTF. There are also UTF-16 and UTF-32. If your document is in a Latin-based encoding, you probably don't need to change anything about it for it to be UTF. A single UTF document can be in various languages with no need to switch encodings halfway through.

IDE

Acronym for Integrated Development Environment. Is an application that provides several tools for software development. An IDE usually includes: source code editor, which is similar to a Text Editor debugger, in the case of WordPress, useful debuggers are those for PHP and Javascript code automated builder

Apache

Apache HTTP Server Project, a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available open source HTTP Web server software produced by the Apache Software Foundation. It is the most commonly used web server on the internet, and is available on many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X. Apache serves as a great foundation for publishing WordPress-powered sites.

exs of text editor programs:

Atom (Mac OS X, Free, Open Source) BBEdit (Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, $$$) Boxer Text Editor (Windows) Brackets(Open Source, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) Coda (Mac OS X, Shareware) Crimson Editor (Windows, Freeware) EditPad (cross-platform) EditPlus (Windows) Editra (cross-platform, Open Source, Free) emacs (Unices, Windows, Mac OS X, Open Source, Free) gedit (Unices) JEdit (cross-platform) Kate (Unices) Komodo Edit (cross-platform, Open Source, Free) Kwrite (Unices) Notepad++ (Windows, Open Source, Free) Notepad2 (Windows, Freeware) phpDesigner (Windows) pico (Unices) PSPad (Windows, Free) Smultron (Mac OS X, Open Source, Free/$) Smultron 4 (req OS-X Lion) (v.cheap in MacApp store) SubEthaEdit (Mac OS X, $) Sublime Text 2 (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) TextEdit (comes with Mac OS X) TextMate (Mac OS X, $) TextPad (Windows) TextWrangler (Mac OS X, Free) UltraEdit-32 vim (Unices, Windows, Mac OS X, Open Source, Free)

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets, is a W3C open standards programming language for specifying how a web page is presented. It allows web site designers to create formatting and layout for a web site independently of its content.

Class

Classes are groupings of CSS styles which can be applied to any HTML element. For classes in PHP, see the Class (Computing) article at Wikipedia and PHP Manual: Classes and Objects.

CVS

Concurrent Versions System and is the software that used to be used coordinate WordPress development. As of February 2005, this function is carried out by Subversion (SVN).

XML

Extensible Markup Language, is written in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and essentially allows you to define your own markup language. XML is extremely useful in describing, sharing, and transmitting data across the Internet. Typically used in conjunction with HTML, XML defines data and HTML displays that data.

Hook

Hooks are specified, by the developer, in Actions and Filters. Here is a (hopefully) complete list of all existing Hooks within WordPress. Because Hooks are required by Actions and Filter you may hear the phrase "Action Hooks" and "Filter Hooks" used from time to time. In technical and strict terms: a Hook is an event, i.e. event as understood by Observer pattern, invoked by the do_action() or apply_filters() call that afterwards triggers all the action or filter functions, previously hooked to that event using add_action() or add_filter(), respectively.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language, is a markup language used to describe the semantic content of web pages. It is usually used with CSS and/or JavaScript. WordPress renders web pages to conform to the HTML5 standard. The standard is set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C org).

Database version

In WordPress, the database version is a number that increases every time changes are made to the way WordPress organizes the data in its database. It is not the same as the version of the database software, MySQL. For example, the database version in WordPress 3.3 was 19470, and the database version in WordPress 3.3.1 did not change. This tells anyone planning to use backed-up data from the older version that they do not need to check for changes in the structure of the data. WordPress stores its database version in the database, as the option named "db_version" in every WordPress site's "wp_options" table. (The table name prefix "wp_" may be missing or different in some cases.)

Action

In WordPress; an Action is a PHP function that is executed at specific points throughout the WordPress Core. Developers can create a custom Action using the Action API to add or remove code from an existing Action by specifying any existing Hook. This process is called "hooking". For example: A developer may want to add code to the footer of a Theme. This could be accomplished by writing new function, then Hooking it to the wp_footer Action. Custom Actions differ from custom Filters because custom Actions allow you to add or remove code from existing Actions. Whereas custom Filters allow you to replace specific data (such as a variable) found within an existing Action.

String

In computer science a string is any finite sequence of characters (i.e., letters, numerals, symbols and punctuation marks). Typically, programmers must enclose strings in quotation marks for the data to be recognized as a string and not a number or variable name.

Network

In the WordPress user interface, a network is a collection of separate sites created in a single WordPress installation by the multisite feature. The sites in a WordPress network are not interconnected like the things in other kinds of networks. They are very like the separate blogs at WordPress.com. In WordPress code the network is known as the site and the sites are known as blogs.

Site

In the WordPress user interface, a site can simply be the website created by WordPress, or it can be a virtual website created as part of a network by the multisite feature. A site in a network is virtual in the sense that it does not have its own directory on the server, although it has its own URL and it might have its own domain name. In WordPress code the site is the website created by WordPress. If multisite is in use, then the site is the network website and each virtual website is known as a blog.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is an operating system specifically for modern Macintosh computers. The operating system was commercially released in 2001. It consists of two main parts: Darwin, an open source Unix-like environment which is based on the BSD source tree and the Mach microkernel, adapted and further developed by Apple Computer with involvement from independent developers; and a proprietary GUI named Aqua, developed by Apple.

Some examples of software which can edit text, but which are NOT regarded as basic text editors and NOT recommended for use on WordPress files:

Microsoft Word Microsoft Works Microsoft Excel Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator Adobe Dreamweaver

ex of non-plain text formats that require special software for editing:

Microsoft Word documents Microsoft Excel spreadsheets Images, such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension and is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support: Text in character sets other than ASCII Non-text attachments Message bodies with multiple parts Header information in non-ASCII character sets MIME's use, however, has grown beyond describing the content of email and now is often used to describe content type in general including for the web and as a storage for rich content in some commercial products.

Spam

Once upon a time, SPAM was an animal by-product that came in a can and was fodder for many Monty Python sketches, but since the world-wide adoption of the internet as an integral part of daily life, Spam has become synonymous with what is wrong with the internet. Spam, in general terms, is an email or other forms of unsolicited advertising. Spam is very easy to spread throughout the internet, and works on the principle that if you send out thousands, or hundreds of thousands of unsolicited advertisements, scams, or other questionable methods of making money, that you only need a very small percentage of people to be fooled and you will make lots of money. Common spam these days comes from online gambling sites and those trying to sell drugs for "male enhancement." Lately, web logs, or blogs, as we call them, have been targeted by spammers to try to increase their site ratings in the search engines. Spammers use various methods to distribute their electronic junk mail, and employ bots, or computer programs to quickly and easily send email or comments to millions of addresses and IPs all over the world. Spammers can be difficult to track down as they often hijack peoples' email and IP addresses. When this happens, it may appear a friend sent you the spam, but in fact, the spammer's bot grabbed your friend's email address and used it to hide the true source of the spam. WordPress developers and community members are constantly working on more and better ways to combat these annoying spammers as they clog the internet with their garbage. You can help by offering your talents, ideas, suggestions, or just by being vigilant and installing any of the currently-available spam combating tools.

Post Type

Post type refers to the various structured data that is maintained in the WordPress posts table. Native (or built-in) registered post types are post, page, attachment, revision, and nav-menu-item. Custom post types are also supported in WordPress and can be defined with register_post_type(). Custom post types allow users to easily create and manage such things as portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, and whatever a user or developer can imagine.

RDF

Resource Description Framework. A language used to describe the locations of resources on the web. WordPress can produce output in RDF format that describes the locations of posts. Like RSS, RDF is used for content syndication.

SSH

Secure Shell. It is a communication protocol for connecting to remote computers over TCP/IP. Various authentication methods can be used which make SSH more secure than Telnet.

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer and is the predecessor to Transport Layer Security. These are cryptographic protocols for secure communications across an unsecured network like the Internet.

Task Based Documentation

Task based, or task oriented documentation is writing that takes you through a process/task step-by-step; it is succinct, lacks jargon, is easily understood, and structured entirely around performing specific tasks. In order to get to Z, you need to: Step x Step y Step z Keep in mind that people who need to know how to perform a task usually need answers quick!

XFN

The XHTML Friends Network. A decentralised project to have inter-blog links that represent relationships between bloggers. XFN links resemble <a href="http://www.photomatt.net/" rel="friend met">Photo Matt</a>.

Back End

The back end is the area that authorized users can sign into to add, remove and modify content on the website. This may also be referred to as "WordPress", "admin" or "the administration area".

Draft

The draft post status is for WordPress posts which are saved, but as yet unpublished. A draft post can only be edited through the Administration Panel, Write Post SubPanel by users of equal or greater User Level than the post's author.

Front End

The front end is what your visitors see and interact with when they come to your website, www.YourSite.com.

gettext

The gettext system is a set of tools and standards for language translation, used by WordPress to provide versions in many languages. In WordPress a text string for translation may have a domain and a context. For example, a plugin might specify its own domain for translations, and a context might help translators to provide different translations of the same English word or phrase in different parts of the user interface.

Post status

The status of a post, as set in the Administration Panel, Write Post SubPanel is either: Published (viewable by everyone), Draft (incomplete post viewable by anyone with proper user level), or Private (viewable only to WordPress users at Administrator level).

Trackback

Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written on his blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a textbook.

Robots.txt

Web Robots are programs which traverse the Web automatically. They are also called Web Wanderers, Web Crawlers, and Spiders. Search Engines are the main Web Robots. Some Web Robots look for a file named robots.txt on your web server to see what and where they should look for content and files on your web server. Some Web Robots ignore this file.

Ping

Within the WordPress interface, "ping" is sometimes used to refer to Pingbacks and Trackbacks. In general computer terms, "ping" is a common utility used in a TCP/IP environment to determine if a given IP Address exists or is reachable. Typically, Ping is used to diagnose a network connection problem. Many times you will be asked, "Can you ping that address?". That means, does the Ping utility return a success message trying to reach the "problem" IP Address?

Port

Within the context of the WordPress community, a port is a bit of code that has been rewritten to be compatible with WordPress. For example, if someone wrote a plugin for MoveableType, WordPress users may want to find a port of that plugin for WordPress. Port can also be used as a verb: to rewrite a piece of software for a different platform/language.

XHTML

XHTML, or Extensible HyperText Markup Language, is the successor to HTML as the W3C standard language with which all web pages are created. It is often used in conjunction with CSS and JavaScript.

Permalink

a URL at which a resource or article will be permanently stored. Many pages driven by Content Management Systems contain excerpts of content which is frequently rotated, making linking to bits of information within them a game of chance. Permalinks allow users to bookmark full articles at a URL they know will never change, and will always present the same content. Permalinks are optional in WordPress, but are highly recommended as they greatly increase the cleanliness of URL. WordPress uses the Apache module mod_rewrite to implement its permalink system.

chmod

a Unix/Linux shell command used to change permissions on files. Its name is a contraction of "change mode."

Term

a classification, group or subset of a Taxonomy, where the latter can be a Category, Tag or Custom Taxonomy. By default, terms have a title, a slug and a description. Hierarchichal taxonomies like categories can define a parent term.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

a client-server protocol for transferring files. It is one way to download files, and the most common way to upload files to a server. An FTP client is a program which can download files from, or upload files to, an FTP server. You may need to use an FTP client to upload your WordPress files to your web server, particularly if you use a hosting provider.

Telnet

a communications protocol used to establish a connection to another computer. Telnet runs on top of TCP/IP and is typically used in conjuction with terminal emulation software to login to remote computers. Telnet is inherently insecure and has largely been replaced by SSH

Hosting Provider

a company or organization which provides, usually for a fee, infrastructure for making information accessible via the web. This involves the use of a web server (including web server software such as Apache), and may involve one or more related technologies, such as FTP, PHP, MySQL, and operating system software such as Linux or Unix.

*Web Server

a computer containing software for, and connected to infrastructure for, hosting, or serving, web sites written in HTML. The most common web server software on the internet is Apache, which is frequently used in conjunction with PHP, Perl, and other scripting languages. It is possible to create one's own web server, hosted on any speed of internet connection, but many people choose to purchase packages from hosting providers, who have the capacity and facilities to provide adequate bandwidth, uptime, hardware, and maintenance for frequently-visited web sites.

Unix

a computer operating system developed at AT&T's Bell Laboratories starting back in 1969. Initially designed with the objective of creating an OS written in a high level language rather than assembly, a majority of web servers currently run on different "flavors" of this high-performance OS, or on Linux, developed as a Unix-like operating system.

Developer (dev)

a computer programmer who is active in creating, modifying, and updating a software product.

Excerpt

a condensed description of your blog post and refers to the summary entered in the Excerpt field of the Administration > Posts > Add New SubPanel. The excerpt is used to describe your post in RSS feeds and is typically used in displaying search results. The excerpt is sometimes used in displaying the Archives and Category views of your posts. Use the Template Tag the_excerpt() to display the contents of this field. Note that if you do not enter information into the Excerpt field when writing a post, and you use the_excerpt() in your theme template files, WordPress will automatically display the first 55 words of the post's content. An excerpt should not be confused with the teaser, which refers to words before the <!--more--> in a post's content. When typing a long post you can insert the <!--more--> Quicktag after a few sentences to act as a cut-off point. When the post is displayed, the teaser, followed by a hyperlink (such as Read the rest of this entry...), is displayed. Your visitor can then click on that link to see the full version of your post. The Template Tag, the_content() should be used to display the teaser.

Multisite

a feature of WordPress 3.0 and later versions that allows multiple virtual sites to share a single WordPress installation. When the multisite feature is activated, the original WordPress site can be converted to support a network of sites.

Slug

a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly version of the post title (which has been automatically generated by WordPress), but a slug can be anything you like. Slugs are meant to be used with permalinks as they help describe what the content at the URL is. Example post permalink: http://wordpress.org/development/2006/06/wordpress-203/ The slug for that post is "wordpress-203".

Absolute URL

a full URL

Feed

a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then posting the information about new content and updates to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds. Feeds generally are based on XML technology.

Gravatar

a globally recognized avatar (a graphic image or picture that represents a user). Typically a user's gravatar is associated with their email address, and using a service such as Gravatar.com. The site owner to can configure their site so that a user's gravatar is displayed along with their comments.

Avatar

a graphic image/picture that represents a user

Plugin

a group of php functions that can extend the functionality present in a standard WordPress weblog. These functions may all be defined in one php file, or may be spread among more than one file. Usually, a plugin is a php file that can be uploaded to the "wp-content/plugins" directory on your webserver, where you have installed WordPress. Once you have uploaded the plugin file, you should be able to "turn it on" or Enable it from the "Plugins" page in the administration interface of your weblog. The WordPress source code contains hooks that can be used by plugins.

Blogroll

a list of links to various blogs or news sites. Often a blogroll is "rolled" by a service which tracks updates (using feeds) to each site in the list, and provides the list in a form which aggregates update information.

Domain Name

a name used for identification purposes on the Internet. In WordPress a domain name usually identifies a server where WordPress is installed. To make this work, the Internet's domain name system (DNS) maps the domain name to a server's IP address. For example, the domain name example.com maps to the IP address 192.0.43.10. Many domain names can map to the same IP address, allowing a single server to run many websites. For example, the the domain names www.example.com and example.net also map to the IP address 192.0.43.10.

MySQL

a popular open source SQL (Structured Query Language) database implementation, available for many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X. WordPress requires a MySQL database to store all blog information, including posts, comments, metadata, and other information. WordPress also works with MySQL-compatible databases such as MariaDB and Percona Server.

phpMyAdmin

a popular, powerful web-based interface for administering MySQL databases. It is open source, written in PHP, and is among the better tools available for working with MySQL databases.

Text editor

a program which edits files in plain text format, as compared to binary format. Using a non-text based word processing program (e.g. using Microsoft Word to edit PHP scripts) can cause major problems in your code. This is because non-text based word processing programs insert extra formatting into text files, and can corrupt the files when they need to be interpreted by the interpreter. An editor like Notepad does not insert any extra formatting. Edit WordPress Files with a text only editor.

Shell

a program which interacts directly with an operating system such as MS-DOS, Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, or others — but it is most commonly associated with Unices. It is often referred to as a 'console' or 'command line', because it is controlled using typed commands rather than mouse or graphical interface input. Most often, when interacting with a remote computer (as one would when configuring WordPress), an additional "faux" shell is involved called SSH. Some popular shell programs are: Bash (Bourne Again Shell) Tcsh (an expanded C Shell) Zsh

JavaScript

a programming language that WordPress uses to make certain processing occur in your web browser when it is inconvenient or impossible for the server to do that processing. For example, when you reply to a comment in a WordPress blog, WordPress uses JavaScript to move the comment form inside the comment you are replying to.

PHP

a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a popular server-side scripting language designed specifically for integration with HTML, and is used (often in conjunction with MySQL) in Content Management Systems and other web applications. It is available on many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X, and is open source software.

*Widget

a self-contained area of a web page that performs a specific function, or the code that generates such a self-contained area. For example, WordPress has a built-in widget that displays a list of pages in a weblog's sidebar, and it has another built-in widget that displays a list of recent comments in the Dashboard. Plugins and themes can provide additional widgets.

QuickTag

a shortcut, or one-click button, that inserts HTML code into your posts. The <em> (emphasis) and </em> (stop emphasis) HTML tags are example of Quicktags. Some Quicktags, such as <!--contactform-->, insert HTML comment code that is used by plugins to replace text or perform certain actions.

Shortcode

a technique for embedding a snippet of PHP code into the body of a page or other content item.

AJAX

a technique that web pages use to have the server perform certain processing without reloading the web page. For example, when you approve a comment in a WordPress blog, WordPress uses AJAX to change the comment's status, and you see the change without having to reload the Comments screen.

Sidebar

a vertical column provided by a theme for displaying information other than the main content of the web page. Themes usually provide at least one sidebar at the left or right of the content. Sidebars usually contain widgets that an administrator of the site can customize. In a theme, sidebars are generated by a template file, typically named sidebar.php.

Perl

acronym for Practical Extraction and Report Language, but it's most commonly spelled as a proper name. It's a very popular and powerful scripting language used for web applications, although its use is being largely replaced by PHP in the mainstream. One of its strengths lies in its speedy and effective use of regular expressions. Its unofficial motto is, "There's More Than One Way To Do It," or "TMTOWTDI," owing to the extreme flexibility of the syntax.

mod-rewrite

an extension module of the Apache web server software which allows for "rewriting" of URLs on-the-fly. Rewrite rules use regular expressions to parse the requested URL from the client, translate it into a different URL, and serve the content of this new URL under the original URL or pointing the client to make the new URL request. WordPress uses mod_rewrite for its permalink structure, and also for multisite networks, which are both optional functionality.

Linux

an open source computer operating system, created by Linus Torvalds, similar in style to Unix. It is popular in web server and other high-performance computing environments, and has recently begun to gain popularity in workstation environments as well.

subversion

an open-source version control software tool used by the WordPress Developers to maintain and track the changes and updates to the various WordPress versions.

Comments

are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to posts. Typically readers simply provide their own thoughts regarding the content of the post, but users may also provide links to other resources, generate discussion, or simply compliment the author for a well-written post. You can control and regulate comments by filters for language and content. Comments can be queued for approval before they are visible on the web site. This is useful in dealing with comment spam.

Database

computing terms is software used to manage information in an organized fashion. WordPress uses the MySQL relational database management system for storing and retrieving the content of your blog, such as posts, comments, and so on.

Content

consists of text, images, or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a web site, which provides a framework into which the content is inserted, and the presentation of a site, which involves graphic design. A Content Management System changes and updates content, rather than the structural or graphic design of a web site.

Deprecated

functinos or template tags no longer supported and will soon be obsolete

Role

gives users permission to perform a group of tasks. When a user logs in and is authenticated, the user's role determines which capabilities the user has, and each capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. All users with the same role normally have the same capabilities. For example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts, but not permission to edit other users' posts. WordPress comes with six roles and over fifty capabilities in its role-based access system. Plugins can modify the system.

Meta

has several meanings, but generally means information about. In WordPress, meta usually refers to administrative type information. As described in Meta Tags in WordPress, meta is the HTML tag used to describe and define a web page to the outside world (search engines). In the article Post Meta Data, meta refers to information associated with each post, such as the author's name and the date posted. Meta Rules define the general protocol to follow in using the Codex. Also, many WordPress based sites offer a Meta section, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register at that site. Finally, Meta is a MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions within Codex.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface)

is a specification for server-side communication scripts designed to transfer information between a web server and a web-client (browser). Typically, HTML pages that collect data via forms use CGI programming to process the form data once the client submits it.

ASCHII (pronounced as "ask ee"

is a standard but limited character set containing only English letters, numbers, a few common symbols, and common English punctuation marks. WordPress content is not restricted to ASCII, but can include any Unicode characters. ASCII is short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

IP address

is a unique number (e.g. 70.84.29.148) assigned to a computer (or other internet-capable information appliance, such as a network printer) to enable it to communicate with other devices using the Internet Protocol. It is a computer's identity on the internet, and every computer connected to the internet is assigned at least one — although the methods of assigning these addresses, and the permanence and duration of their assignment, differ according to the use of the computer and the circumstances of its internet use. Every web server is assigned an IP address as well, but often times hosting providers will assign multiple IP addresses to one computer, in the event that multiple web sites reside on the same physical server. This is the case with most inexpensive 'managed' or 'group' hosting packages. Domain names were created to provide an easier means of accessing internet resources than IP addresses, which are cumbersome to type and difficult to remember. Every domain name has at least one corresponding IP address, but only a small number of IP addresses have a domain name associated with them, since only computers that are servers require domain names. The domain name system (DNS) is what maps domain names to IP addresses.

Array

is one of the basic data structures used in computer programming. An array contains a list (or vector) of items such as numeric or string values. Arrays allow programmers to randomly access data. Data can be stored in either one-dimensional or multi-dimensional arrays. A one-dimension array seven (7) elements would be: 105 200 54 53 102 13 405 The Template Tag wp_list_categories() uses a one-dimensional array for the 'exclude' parameter. An example of two-dimensional array, 7 by 3 elements in size, would be: 105 200 54 53 102 13 405 15 210 14 513 2 2313 4512 501 500 499 488 552 75 1952

Gallery (for wordpress)

is specifically an exposition of images attached to a post. In that same vein, an upload is "attached to a post" when you upload it while editing a post. In the uploader there is a "Gallery" tab that shows all the uploads attached to the post you are editing. When you have more than one attachment in a post, you should see at the bottom of the Gallery tab a button marked "Insert gallery". That button inserts a shortcode "[gallery]" into the post. WordPress replaces that shortcode with an exposition of all images attached to that post. Non-image file types are excluded from the gallery. Note: If you don't see the "Insert gallery" button, it may be because you have not attached two images to the post. The pretty URLs for attachments are made only after you have published the post and should be composed as the post permalink plus the attachment slug.

UTC

is the basis of international time standards from which time zones around the world are calculated. For most purposes it is the same as the older GMT standard.

Relative Path

is the location of a file in relation to the current working directory and does not begin with a slash (/). This is different from an absolute path which gives an exact location.

Dashboard

is the main administration screen for a site (a weblog), or for a network of sites. It summarizes information about the site or network, and also external information, in one or more widgets that the Dashboard user can enable, disable, and move around.

Pingback

lets you notify the author of an article if you link to his article (article on a blog, of course). If the links you include in an article you write on a blog lead to a blog which is pingback-enabled, then the author of that blog gets a notification in the form of a pingback that you linked to his article.

Page

often used to present "static" information about yourself or your site. A good example of a Page is information you would place on an About Page. A Page should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called posts. Pages are typically "timeless" in nature and live "outside" your blog. The word "page" has long been used to describe any HTML document on the web.

Unix Time

or a timestamp, is a method of tracking time by determining the approximate number of seconds from a particular event. That event is called an Epoch. Since this time format is only off by a few seconds each century, it is usually considered good enough for most applications. Unix time is (currently) a ten digit number, and looks like this: 1229362315. WordPress often uses a Unix timestamp internally to track time. The human readable times and dates you see are converted from Unix Time or from a MySQL DATETIME field.

Absolute Path

or full path is a unique location of a file or directory name within a computer or filesystem, and usually starts with the root directory or drive letter. Directories and subdirectories listed in a path are usually separated by a slash (/). Example: /Users/Matt/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg To find the absolute filesystem path of the directory containing a web page, copy the code below into a new text file, save the file as path.php (thus making a simple PHP web page), and move that file to your web server. Then direct your web browser to the URL address of that file (e.g. http://www.example.com/path.php).

Microformats

provide a way for programs to read certain information in web pages without making the pages look any different to humans. They add semantics to the generic HTML markup in order for these programs to understand the meaning of specific parts of a web page content which is better recognized by humans. For example, a web page displaying a user's profile could use microformats to make it easy for a program to extract the user's contact information so that it can be added to an address book in a single operation. In WordPress, some themes and plugins support some microformats.

Binaries

refer to compiled computer programs, or executables. Many open source projects, which can be re-compiled from source code, offer pre-compiled binaries for the most popular platforms and operating systems.

API

refer to wikipedia

Collation

refers to the order used to sort the letters, numbers, and symbols of a given character set. For example, because WordPress, by default, uses the UTF-8 (utf8) character set, and when the WordPress MySQL database tables are created during the installation process, MySQL assigns utf8_general_ci collation to those tables. Beginning with Version 2.2, the collation (and character set) used by WordPress is defined in the wp-config.php file.

Relative URI

relative URI (sometimes called a relative link) is a partial URI that is interpreted (resolved) relative to a base URI. On the World Wide Web, relative URIs come in two forms: A relative URI with an absolute path is interpreted relative to the domain root: /images/icecream.jpg → http://domain.example/images/icecream.jpg A relative URI with a relative path is interpreted relative to the URL of the current document. E.g., on the web page http://domain.example/icecream/chocolate.html, strawberry.html → http://domain.example/icecream/strawberry.html

Blog

s an online journal, diary, or serial published by a person or group of people. Blogs are typically used by individuals or peer groups, but are occasionally used by companies or organizations as well. In the corporate arena, the only adopters of the blog format so far have tended to be design firms, web media companies, and other "bleeding edge" tech firms. Blogs often contain public as well as private content. Depending on the functionality of the CMS software that is used, some authors may restrict access — through the use of accounts or passwords — to content that is too personal to be published publicly.

Permissions

security settings restricting or allowing users to perform certain functions. In the case of files on Unix or Linux systems, there are three types of permissions: read, write, and execute. In the case of MySQL databases, there are many more: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc. — although MySQL refers to them as privileges.

Open Source

simply programming code that can be read, viewed, modified, and distributed, by anyone who desires. WordPress is distributed under an open source GNU General Public License (GPL).

Transient

temporal data identified by a custom name, stored in the web server database or memory for fast access. This temporal nature and use of fast memory caching is their primary distinction from Options.

Moblogging

the act of posting to one's blog via a mobile device, e.g. mobile phone, smartphone or tablet. It is pronounced as mōbə-logging or mōb-logging, or sometimes as mŏb-logging in reference to smart mobs.

DNS

the domain name system, is the system that maps domain names to IP addresses. When you use a web browser to visit a website, your browser first extracts the site's domain name from the URL. Then it uses the DNS to find the IP address for that domain name. Then it connects to that IP address.

Hacking

the process of writing code for, or contributing code to, a piece of software. There is some controversy surrounding the meaning of this term. It began as a benign term meaning "to exercise proficiency" or "to alter or improve," but the popular media have since construed it to mean "to break into a computer system, usually with malicious intent." Many in the computer industry have recently begun trying to 'take back' the word from its popular mutation, and many have adopted the term cracking to replace the malicious interpretation. Because of the desire to reclaim the word, you will often find the term used in conjunction with open source projects, intended in its benign form. For more information about the history of the term, please see Wikipedia's article on Hacker.

Output Compression

the removal of white spaces, carriage returns, new lines and tabs from your HTML document. This reduces the file size of the HTML document without changing the functionality.

Navigation

the term used to describe text on a page that, when selected, redirects you to a corresponding page elsewhere on the website. Navigation may sometimes be referred to as the menu, links and hyperlinks.

GMT

time zone from which all time zones are measured also as UTC