Website terms owners should know: a plain glossary

This is a plain glossary of the website terms small business owners run into most, from domain and hosting to DNS, SSL and CMS. Each one is explained in a sentence or two, with what it means for you in practice. The terms are grouped by topic rather than alphabetically, because they make more sense next to their neighbors. Keep it open the next time a web designer, registrar or hosting company sends you an email that reads like code.

Your address on the internet

Domain (or domain name). Your website's address, like yourbusiness.com. You do not buy it forever; you rent it a year or more at a time. Whoever is listed as its owner controls where it points and where its email goes. What a domain name is has the longer version.

Registrar. The company you rent the domain from, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Network Solutions or Squarespace. It holds the account that controls your domain, which is why that login matters so much.

Domain extension. The ending after the dot: .com, .net, .org, .us and many more.

Renewal. Paying for the next period of your domain. If it lapses, your website and email can stop working, and after a grace period someone else can register the name.

WHOIS. The public record of who registered a domain. Many registrars hide personal details with a privacy setting. You can look up any domain's registrar at ICANN's lookup tool.

Authorization code (EPP code). A password-like code from your current registrar that lets you move the domain to a different registrar.

Transfer lock. A setting that stops your domain being moved to another registrar. It protects you from theft; you switch it off only when you deliberately transfer.

Subdomain. An extra address in front of your domain, like shop.yourbusiness.com or book.yourbusiness.com. It can point to a different service from your main site.

How the address finds the website

DNS (Domain Name System). The internet's address book. When someone types your domain, DNS tells their device which computer holds your website and which service handles your email.

Nameservers. The servers that hold your domain's DNS records. Whoever runs your nameservers (often your registrar, your host or a service like Cloudflare) is where you change those records.

DNS records. The individual lines in that address book. The common ones:

• A record: points your domain to the numeric address of the computer serving your website.
• CNAME record: points one name at another name, often used for "www" or a subdomain.
• MX record: says where your email should be delivered. Changing it by mistake is the classic way a website change breaks email.
• TXT record: a line of text used to prove you own the domain or to set email security rules.

Propagation. The time it takes for DNS changes to reach everyone. It is often minutes, sometimes a few hours, occasionally up to a day or two.

Pointing a domain. Changing DNS records so your domain shows a new website, without moving the domain to another registrar.

Where the website lives

Hosting. The service that keeps your website's files on a computer that is always online and sends them to visitors. What web hosting is explains the kinds.

Server. The computer that does the hosting. On cheap "shared hosting", many websites share one server.

Uptime. How much of the time your site is online and reachable. Hosts like to advertise it.

CDN (content delivery network). A network of servers in many cities that keep copies of your site close to visitors, so it loads quickly wherever they are.

Backup. A copy of your website you can restore if something goes wrong. Ask where it is kept and how a restore is done.

Static site. A website made of ready-made pages rather than pages assembled from a database for each visitor. Typically fast and with little to patch.

Safety and the padlock

SSL certificate (more precisely, TLS). The digital certificate that lets your site use a secure connection. Many hosts and builders provide it automatically.

HTTPS. The secure version of a web address, shown with a padlock or similar icon in the browser. Sites without it get "Not secure" warnings.

Two-factor authentication (2FA). A login that asks for a code from your phone as well as your password.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Three DNS records that prove email from your domain really comes from you, and help keep your messages out of spam folders.

Building and editing the site

CMS (content management system). The software that lets you edit your website's content without writing code. WordPress is the best-known one. What a CMS is goes further.

Website builder. A service such as Wix or Squarespace that combines hosting, design templates and an editor in one subscription.

Theme or template. A ready-made design that sets the look of the site: fonts, colors and layout.

Plugin (or app). An add-on that gives a site an extra feature, like a form or a gallery. Each one is something else to update.

Responsive design. A layout that rearranges itself to fit phones, tablets and computers.

Cache. A stored copy of a page or file kept so it does not have to be fetched or rebuilt every time. "Clear your cache" means telling your browser to throw away its stored copies and load the latest.

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

Pages, addresses and Google

URL. The full address of one page, like yourbusiness.com/services/drain-cleaning.

Redirect. An instruction that sends visitors (and Google) from an old page address to a new one. A "301" is a permanent redirect, the right kind when a page has moved for good.

404 page. What visitors see when a page does not exist.

Page title. The name of a page that appears in the browser tab and, usually, as the blue headline in Google results.

Meta description. A short summary of a page that Google may show under the title in results.

Alt text. A short description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines to understand the picture.

Sitemap. A file listing your site's pages, which helps search engines find them all.

Google Search Console. Google's free tool showing how your site appears in Google search and flagging problems.

Google Business Profile. Your business's listing on Google Search and Maps, with hours, reviews, photos and your website link.

SEO (search engine optimization). Work that helps search engines understand and show a site. Nobody can honestly promise a particular position in Google.

Analytics. Tools that count visits and show which pages people read.

Cookie. A small file a website stores in the visitor's browser, often used to recognize them on later visits.

Using this glossary

• Bookmark this page for the next confusing email.
• Write down which company is your registrar, your host and your email provider.
• Note who controls your nameservers, because that is where any DNS change happens.
• Next time you are quoted for website work, check you know what every line means.

If you would rather skip most of these terms and see what a new site would look like, you can see your site rebuilt first and decide with the finished pages in front of you.