PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments
and money transfers be made through the internet.
It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional
paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal
performs payment processing for online vendors, auction
sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges
a fee.
When referring to an e-commerce web site a category
is a group of products that related to each other.
For example milk and cheese would both fall under
the category of dairy.
The search facility allows visitors to search
through the products in your store by typing
words into a text field.
Other search options can be made available, for example to filter out any items
older than a specified date.
An online shopping basket is a virtual representation of a shopping basket.
Visitors add items from the online shop into the basket. This basket is then
taken to the virtual checkout to pay for the goods/services.
A secure area is an encrypted web page or page which allows the site visitor to enter
sensitive information in a secure manner.
The encryption alters the data when it is sent to or recieved from the secure server. If the
information is intercepted in any way (a common hacking technique) then it appears to be
garbage and is totally indecipherable.
Email forwarding is a term used to describe the redirection
of emails from one address to another. For example you may
wish to set up a number of email addresses but only wish to
have one email inbox. In this case email forwarding is the
ideal solutions, any emails sent to these alternative addresses
are redirected to a single address.
A global problem with emails at the present time is
what is called 'spam'. This is an email sent in large
numbers to randomised or somehow collected email addresses, normally these
emails contain adverts for various products or services
that may be considered unsavoury or may contain malicous files such as a virus.
Due to the nature of the email system used across the
world it is impossible to completely eliminate spam.
Spam filters work to attempt to identify and act upon
possible spam emails by various methods.
Spam filters can act upon suspected spam emails in
a number of different ways, either deleting, marking
or redirecting these emails. It is important
to note that spam filters are not totally infallible
and will identify legitimate emails as spam on occasion.
Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is a protocol
used to gain access to emails in an email inbox.
POP3 is used by email programs such as
Outlook Express, Thunderbird, KMail and Apple's
Mail program.
Webmail is a method of checking emails using a web browser to view a web page.
This is useful if you are on the move and need to monitor your emails or if you do not
use apersonal computer and often use public computers.
The two most common types of web mail
system are Horde
and Squirrel Mail.
There are of course also proprietory webmail systems such as Hotmail and Gmail.
An Administration Section is a private area
for the owner of the web site to update certain
features on the site such as shop, news or gallery items.
This section may also allow for updates of certain site
details such as contact details, number of items per
page and other such features. The scope of an Administration Section is
limited only by the clients requirements.
A form is made up of a number of fields. A field essentially
a tool to allow a visitor to answer a question on a form.
There are a number of different types, the more common ones are
shown below.
cPanel is an advanced control panel system that allows
the user to change a wide variety of aspects of their web
hosting service settings through an easy to use graphical
interface.
For more information about cPanel visit
wikipedia.
In this case Storage Space refers to the amount of space
on the web server for storing the web site. This includes
text, pictures and other types of data. This
is measured in bytes.
A redirect is a controlled movement of a visitor from one site to another.
For example if a user navigates to http://www.yourdomain.com/UK/ they can be
automatically redirected to http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/
AWStats is an advanced statistics monitoring system
which allows the client to view information concerning
visitors to the web site. Information includes such things
as country of origin, volume of traffic at specific times,
keywords used on search engines to locate the web site
and bandwidth used.
Screen readers are programs made to
read text from a screen. The main use
for these programs is for partially
sighted or blind people to be able to use a
computer without assistance. During recent
years UK laws have changed to ensure
that people using screen readers are not
discriminated against.
C is a well established programming language that allows development of applications that can be executed with
no additional files required except the executable file. C can be compiled on most operating systems and all major
ones, the resulting binary can also be executable or a linkable library. C++ ("C Plus Plus") is a newer
and more powerful version of C, it has the same multiple operating system uses.
Java is an extensive language built from many small packages each of which contain various types of tools. Java
will execute on many different operating systems at several different levels making it very versatile. Execution time
with Java is a little slower than C/C++ but this is not always an issue, Java also requires a 'Java Virtual Machine'
to be installed onto the operating system.
Visual Basic is not a basic language - it is powerful enough for most applications and is extensible using C/C++
link libraries. Visual Basic was designed to build applications with graphical interfaces quickly and reliably although
it is limited to Microsoft operating systems and requires the Visual Basic libraries to be installed onto the operating
system. The speed of execution is medium, somewhere between C/C++ and Java.
Perl and PHP are scripting languages that are relatively powerful, they will execute on most operating systems
and perform tasks on servers around the world all day long. PHP is commonly used to provide dynamic web sites,
digi-masters.com use PHP for most web sites, but it is also powerful as a scripting language. Perl is mostly
used as a scripting language although a web server can be configured to provide dynamic Perl content.
Linux, UNIX and BSD are operating systems commonly used for servers, often they will have no graphical interface
or even a monitor and are instead connected to remotely. These operating systems are very powerful and reliable
and are available free of charge and also commercial versions for a small charge, the operating system is usually
completly open-source which allows anybody to view and compile the operating system and its tools.
Databases are essential to the modern world and are used in many formats to store many different types of data.
Databases store records containing a set of fields within tables of records, a programmer can then use a query
language such as SQL to insert, update, delete and retrieve records as required. Because a database is simply
a list of well organised data operations can be executed very quickly and the programmer can affect the results
by using many different options to filter, sort, organise, etc.
Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia) is an animation tool designed for the Internet and portable media, it uses
sophisticated compression techniques and vector graphics to minimise the total file size and therefore the speed at
which it loads. Flash is a powerful graphics tool but it also contains a scripting language allowing complete
interactivity and near limitless application possiblities.
Many people are familiar with the term Virus but the risks and effects of a Virus on a users computer
is often unknown, a Virus can infect a computer in many ways but the most common is via email or web browsers.
A Virus will often not identify itself and without adequate anti-virus software can lie undetected indefinately,
the Virus could be sending spam emails from your computer, it could be retrieving and recording personal data
or it could be malicous and deleting random files from the computer eventually rendering it unusable.
A Trojan is similar to a virus however it opens your computer to connections from the Internet from which a
malicous user can control your computer from anywhere in the world, the effect is similar to a Virus but often
much worse. An example of a Trojan's use is for a hacker to control thousands of computers infected with a
particular Trojan and simulatenously command them to attack a web server causing the web server to overload and
cease functioning, reasons can be for personal gain, extortion and many other reasons.
At the time of writing this there are some free anti-virus applications but we recommend
AVG Anti-Virus.
Spyware and Malware are similar, usually installed on a computer without the users knowledge via web browsers
or downloads from the Internet (such as free screensavers), the Spyware/Malware software will spy on the users
activities recording information such as websites viewed, passwords entered, instant messaging conversations, etc..
The Spyware/Malware will record this information and periodically send it to the creator of the malicous software
thus informing them of your personal tastes and login details for sites like eBay or Amazon, often stolen goods may
be sold using your account or false credit card details used to purchase items using your account.
At the time of writing this there are several anti-spyware applications that are free to use, we recommend
SpyBot Search & Destroy and
A² (A-Squared).
The home page is meant to introduce viewers to your site.
In larger sites, such as the Silver package and above, this
page will contain minimal information about the site content but
will reflect the content of the site to entice the person
browsing the site to continue to other pages.
Smaller sites, such as the Bronze package,
will have the majority of the
site content on the home page.
The information page contains detailed information about
the purpose of the site, for example this may be
information about a charity, a company or a person.
Smaller sites may do without an information page and instead
have this information on the home page.
The primary reason for putting this information on a
separate page is to not overwhelm the site visitor with
information on the home page. The information page is
there to be a source of information if the visitor wishes
to read more about the site.
The news page is a list of news items, sorted into date
order. This allows the visitor to keep up to date with
developments to do with the site. Usually our news pages
come with an Administration section.
Another useful function of the news page is to let
the visitor see that the site is currently active and
has been updated recently.
A discussion forum allows the site viewers to interact with each other and the site owners and administrators.
Users can post messages such as questions, stories, information, etc. With a forum your site can become an
online community drawing users back to your site.
The gallery page is a selection of pictures showing
the visitor photos or diagrams you think will be of
interest. Generally our gallery pages will come with
an Adminstration section allowing
the site owners/administrators to modify images and their descriptions.
The contact page is a list of ways the visitor can
contact the owner of the web site. In the case of
sites developed by us this will mean a lists of contact details
and a form they can fill in online to contact the
owner of the web site.
