The alternative webmaster glossary

For all the terms used on this site (and elsewhere)

Feel like a muppet when you hear nerd-speak? Or like one of those media graduates who think they know how the Internet works because they attended two morning sessions on Website 101? Your troubles are over. Browse through this page and you'll know more about the Internet than their grandmothers ever did. Promise.

404: Not found. Lost. Disappeared down the pan. Clueless. Like making a Usenet posting of rabbit recipes on rec.pets.rabbits. Like as in "George Bush is a 404 dude". It's also the reply your website gives a browser or SE bot when the page they are trying to reach is not available.

Abort: It's considered not politically correct to use the term anymore so it has been replaced by Choice. As in choice() function.

Alta Vista: The search engine (view history) that was once the best in the world but which suffered from a name that sounded very much like hasta la vista, baby. Spookily prescient.

Ask Jeeves: These two words are what journalists start a sentence with when they want to talk about Ask.com. As in "Ask Jeeves why it sacked 180 people", "Ask Jeeves when it will be profitable" etc. That these headlines have ceased to be funny doesn't stop them.  So, we've got our own question for Jeeves here. (Ask got so tired of the jokes that they retired Jeeves and don't use him anymore.)

Bot: The term bot is used to mean spider, the kind that SEs send to trawl through your site. It's short for ROBOT which is itself short for something else (which I can't remember right now). ROBOT is officially an endangered species, if the word gets any shorter than bot it may become extinct as it's not known to mate and breed successfully in the wild. 

Content Website: A site put together by someone so full of himself that he believes what he has to say is more important than the ads.

CPC: Cost Per Click. In Google Adwords a complex formula is used. A function of the CTR relating to the keyword value of your chosen search terms compared with CTRs of competing ads is plugged into a formula involving other variables and constants including, we understand, the value of Pi. You are then charged whatever the hell they want to charge you.

CPM: It used to stand for Cost Per Million impressions. But now stands for Cost Per Thousand impressions, the M being the roman numeral for 1,000. It was one of the concessions the European Union had to make to the Italians to stop them gesticulating wildly at European Parliamentary sessions. 

Cloud Computing: A way you can pay for the privilege of having somebody else hold all your important information.

CTR: Cloned Textus Receptus. Also used to mean Click Through Ratio.

DIGG: A site originally designed to hold all of the Internet's pointless chatter. It soon got overwhelmed and now pointless chatter can be found almost everywhere. There was a time the Digg site even made sense. <sigh>

Dogpile: A carpet made out of man's best friend.

DMCA: Dangerous Muggers' Cash Accumulates. Related:  Aliens sue the US Air Force.

DMOZ: Used to refer to the ODP (see below); the world's biggest group of volunteers who get together to not do anything.

Glossary: Kinda like what this page is. But more useful. Like this webmaster glossary. And this very comprehensive one. And our own REAL glossary on terms used in the buying and selling of sites.

Google: The company best known for its logo made entirely of radioactive earthworms.

Internet Archive: A graveyard and permanent repository for bad web design.

LSA/LSI: Latent Semantic Analysis/Indexing. It's an SE related technology that remains French to most webmasters. Complicated documents, and the famous Patent Application List, (and list 2) reveal that it's really just a recipe for pea soup. wikipedia

MCSE: Must Consult Someone Experienced. Mindless Consultant Suffocates Easily.

Microsoft: A medical condition that you can remedy with a little blue tablet.

Netiquette: eating chocolates and she lost 10 lbs.

ODP: Open Directory Project. That place where you submit a site and forget about it. (And they forget about it too)

Organic: Full of wholesome shit. Also referred to as "natural" as in: I haven't SEO-ed my site, the rankings I have in the SERPS are organic.

P2P: Peer to Peer, Pornicator to Pornicator, Pickpocket to Pickpocket, Pirate to Pirate. P2P is currently a four letter word. It means you're thieving scum. You're a low down, cheap, lying, crooked, cheating git. Yes, You. And Him. And Everybody. But that's only since 1998. 

POP3: What you get when your mother is a black widow.

PPC: Porn, Pills, Casinos. Also used to mean Pay Per Click (as in support a third world serial clicker).

PR: On the web it doesn't usually stand for Public Relations. History: Used to be called Google Page Rank, then became a source of laughter as "Pigeon Rank" and now a source of massive mirth as "Pretend Rank".

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation/Optimiser. The Americans seem to think it stands for Search Engine Optimization...but they also think footballs aren't round and that the Earth is flat. Ignore them. Search Engine Optimisation is the art of pissing off the search engines by - ironically - making your site more SE friendly.

SE: Search Engine. Or Search Engines. Yes, there are others. Yahoo, MSN, Teoma  etc. have all, at various times, been accused of being search engines.

SERP/S: Search Engine Results Page/s, the page of results you get when you type a search term into a search engine. They're usually filled with SPAM but you can ignore the ads and use the main (organic) listings before you give up and get your Yellow Pages.

SPAM: Site Positioned Above Me. Well, not really. Strictly speaking SPAM is UCE. Yes, just that, unwanted email. But it's used to mean a variety of unwanted things. I've even got a SPAM teenager daughter. Usage: Spamming blogs and guestbooks with links to your spammy site may get your spammy ass into spammy SERPS.

TLD: A misspelling of Tender Loving Care. Also, Top Level Domain, like the "com" in Google.com. Sun Microsystems famously put the dot in dot com. Till then confused people had enormous difficulty remembering nonsense URLs like googlecom. The moral here is that URLs should be memorable. Like Powergen's alleged Italian site, powergenitalia. And, who recalls (whore calls) whore presents.com? Or the land of dicks?

Tucows: The answer to how many cows does it take to change a lightbulb. Someone made a whole site out of this  but managed to leave out every single two cow joke. Now what's the chance of that?

Twisted pair: George Bush and Tony Blair.

Twitter: This so called micro-blogging site is widely accepted as the best way to keep up-to-date with what everyone is having for lunch.

Twitter: The noise made by small birds and other creatures with similar sized brains.

UCE: Unwanted Commercial Email. Also called SPAM. But now generously extended to all unwanted email ranging from the ones informing you that you should repent, the Lord is coming; to those offering you encouragement to increase the size of your member. Money saving tip: There's no point in paying for the latter if the former is true.

Vista: Viruses, Intruders, Spyware, Trojans and Adware.

Web 2.0: A lame term invented to promote Bubble 2.0 but wisely sussed by Tony Blair who discovered it's really all about a spider in his guitar hollow.

Webmaster Guidelines: Like this Google example. It's the restrictions SEs impose on what you can do with your own site. Is it a surprise that the anagram of Webmaster Guidelines is... De smug Brin is a wet eel?

WHOIS: A word that prefixes "your daddy" to suggest I had something to do with your mummy.

Wikileaks: The truth according to those who most want to keep quiet about it.*

Wikipedia: The truth according to those who shout the loudest.*

Wikipedia: The most authoritative definition site on the internet ... or it was till I edited the relevant section to say this page is the new authority.

Wikipedia: The truth according to those who shout the loudest.

WTF: The famous words uttered by Saddam Hussien one morning when he opened a manhole cover...

WYSIWYG: The disclaimer warning on MS Frontpage. Basically, everything is your fault. It's little brother is WTFDYEM - why did you expect more?

XML, XHTML, XSL, XLL, XML: A collection of dyslexic p0rn sites.
 

*contributed by members of experienced-people.net

Didn't find what you were looking for? Still feeling like a muppet? Try our other webmaster glossary or scroll back to the definition of Glossary above and you'll find links to other glossaries that probably cover the obscure term you seem determined to understand.