Website words, explained

A plain-language tour of about 25 website words you will hear from us, from domain and DNS to cache, redirect and webhook, each in a sentence or two.

You will hear a lot of website words from us. You do not need to learn them all. This page gives you a quick, friendly meaning for the ones that come up most. Each word has its own glossary article with more detail, listed at the bottom of this page.

Your address on the internet

Domain name. The address people type to find your website, like yourbusiness.com. You rent it by the year and renew it to keep it.

Registrar. The company where you bought your domain and where you renew it. Examples include GoDaddy, Namecheap and Squarespace Domains.

URL. The full address of one page, including the domain and anything after it, like yourbusiness.com/contact.

Subdomain. A word added in front of your domain to create a separate area, like shop.yourbusiness.com or book.yourbusiness.com.

How the internet finds your site

DNS. The internet's address book. It turns your domain name into the numeric address of the computer that holds your website, and it tells email where to go.

DNS record. One line in that address book. Each record connects part of your domain, like your website or your email, to a service.

Nameserver. The service that holds your domain's DNS records. Changes to your records are made wherever your nameservers point.

IP address. The numeric address of a computer on the internet. DNS exists so people do not have to remember these numbers.

Propagation. The wait after a DNS change while old saved copies expire around the internet. It is usually minutes to hours.

Where your website lives

Website hosting. The service that stores your website and sends it to each visitor. It is separate from where your domain is registered.

Server. A computer that is always on and connected to the internet, whose job is to answer requests, like "send me this page."

CDN. Short for content delivery network. A group of servers around the world that keep copies of your site so it loads quickly wherever your visitors are.

Uptime. The share of time your website is up and reachable. The opposite is downtime.

Staging site. A private copy of your website where changes are built and checked before they go live.

Safety and trust

SSL certificate. A digital certificate that encrypts the connection between your site and its visitors. It is what puts the padlock in the address bar.

HTTPS. The secure version of the web's basic language. A site with a working SSL certificate loads with https at the start of its address.

What you see in the browser

Browser. The app you use to visit websites, such as Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox.

Cache. Saved copies of pages and images that make sites load faster. An old saved copy is the usual reason you do not see a fresh change.

Favicon. The tiny icon next to your site's name in a browser tab or bookmark.

Responsive design. A website built to rearrange itself to fit any screen, from a phone to a wide computer monitor.

Page speed. How fast a page loads and responds. Slow pages lose visitors.

Core Web Vitals. Three measures Google uses to judge how a page feels: how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts to a tap, and whether it jumps around while loading.

When pages move or go missing

404 error. The message a visitor sees when an address has no page, often because the page was renamed or removed.

Redirect. A forwarding rule that sends visitors from an old address to a new one. A 301 redirect is the permanent kind.

Landing page. A page built for one purpose, usually one offer or one ad, with one clear next step for the visitor.

How your tools work together

CMS. Short for content management system. The editing tool that lets people change a website's words and pictures without writing code.

Integration. A connection between two tools so they share information, like your website sending form entries to your email list.

API. A set of rules that lets one piece of software ask another for information or ask it to do something. Most integrations are built on APIs.

Webhook. An automatic message one tool sends to another the moment something happens, like "a new order came in."

Common problems

If you hear a word that is not on this page, ask us in a request. We are happy to explain.
If a word here sounds like your problem, open its glossary article from the list below for more detail.

More in Your website

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