Guide For Working With a Web Developer

When working with a web developer or building a website yourself, there are a lot of terms you will encounter throughout the process. In this series of posts, I am going to cover several of these terms. My goal is to familiarize you, the client, with this terminology, so that you can avoid that awkward feeling that is often part of working with some IT professionals.

In this first post, I am going to cover some initial terms you’ll need to get started with Internet technology and the website design/build process. So, let’s begin.

Domain

The term Domain refers to the human readable version of your website address. It is like the address for your home or apartment. The land upon which your home sits has a complicated legal description for its location. It also has an easy to find and easy to remember description, that you know as the street address. A website’s domain is the street address for your website. In the case of my website, the domain is timscheman.com.

IP Address

The term IP Address refers to the computer readable version of your website address. Unlike the domain, it is not easy to remember, catchy, or easy to brand. An IP Address is made up of a series of letters, numbers, periods and colons. There are currently two forms of IP Addresses. One format looks like this: 67.43.14.98 and the other is even more complicated: 2602:0445:0000:0000:a93e:5ca7:81e2:5f9d. This is why I am thankful for domains and, our next term, DNS.

DNS

Also known as the Domain Name System, DNS is what makes the Domain possible. The easiest way to understand DNS is to think about the contact list in your phone. When you call a friend, you search for them in the contacts list. The computer translates your friends name to their phone number and uses the phone number to call them. DNS works the same way by translating your domain to the unique IP address for your website.

Hosting

The term Hosting refers to the service of providing storage for your website and delivering it to the internet when someone requests it. The hosting company provides a secure space on one of their many large, high powered computers. They will sometimes offer email as part of their services as well.

Domain Registrar

Have you ever had to register to take classes at a school? When you did this, you registered the classes through the registrar’s office. With websites, the registrar is very similar. The registrar is a company that is authorized to register your domain.

When you register the domain, you pay the registrar a fee so they will keep your domain registered, preventing other people or businesses from using it for an agreed-upon timeframe. The registrar also handles the DNS for your specific domain.

WHOIS

WHOIS (pronounced “who is”) is an Internet service used to look up information about a domain. Although it is capitalized, it is not an acronym. It is an abbreviation for the question, “Who is responsible for this domain name?”

When a new domain is registered, the registrar is required to make the registration information publicly available. This information can be looked up online using the WHOIS service. WHOIS records can be made private using a “private registration” service offered by some registrars.

Private Registration

When you register your domain with the Domain Registrar, your personal information is published in the Whois Public Internet Directory, which can be viewed by anyone at anytime. This is required by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as part of the domain name registration process. For an extra fee, some registrars offer the option of masking your personal information. I highly recommend private registration to clients in order to prevent spam and annoying telemarketing calls.

FTP or SFTP

FTP, also know as File Transfer Protocol, refers to a system for transferring files from one computer to another. In order to use FTP, you will need the hostname, username, password, and port number. The hostname will be similar to your domain, but instead of beginning with WWW it will start with FTP. The Port number will usually be “21”.

FTP has a more secure cousin called SFTP. SFTP is similar to FTP but with one difference, the data transfer is encrypted, meaning that the data transfer can’t be intercepted my hackers.

When I am working on a website project, I will request your FTP information during the project kickoff meeting.

Database

The terms database refers to a large collection of data organized for rapid search and retrieval. Modern web design relies heavily on databases to make content management systems function. In a content management system, the database is where the page content, page titles, page URLs and other information about the site are stored.

Content Management System

A content management system, sometimes referred to as a CMS, is a software that allows you to create, edit, publish and delete content. Most CMS systems are designed to manage content on the Internet. There are many CMS software options on the market, including the three leaders; WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. My favorite CMS to use is WordPress. It makes editing content very simple for the website administrator, while at the same time provides all of the development control to build very unique websites.

WordPress

WordPress is my favorite Content Management System. I have yet to come across a website problem I could not solve when using it. It gives me the perfect mix of functionality and control of a website’s appearance.

Just a start to the terminology

Wow, that was a lot of information. This is just a small selection of the terms I will be covering in this series. Please check back next week for the next installment of my blog, where I will cover terminology related to website design.