business advice - Craft Focus Magazine

usiness advice
word on the web - a basic guide
to website terminology
Bob Scott of Loud-n-Clear.com provides a simple guide to what you need to know to
ensure a successful website.
In the fi rst of our series on terminology,
we’ll deal with the terms that get used when
discussing your website requirements with
website developers and hosting companies.
In the next article, we’ll look at some of the
technical terms for the building blocks of a
website.
Backend
Put simply, the backend of a website is the
database, software and various services that
should be invisible to the user. If the
backend processing is all working fi ne then
the users should be able to browse, shop,
pay for, track and receive their purchases
whilst remaining blissfully unaware of what is
happening behind the scenes.
CMS
This stands for Content Management System,
the interface that allows the easy maintenance
of a website, usually in terms of updating
content such as news items, changing prices
and adding (or removing) products.
Domain Names
The snappy .com or .co.uk in your website
address, such as craft-fair.co.uk or craftfocus.
com, is the domain name. There are many
types of domain name, some of them
restricted to particular types of organisation
(eg .ac.uk for academic institutions, .gov.uk for
government bodies etc). Domain registrations
come with an expiry date, typically 2 years
after fi rst registration for .co.uk domains and
1 year for .com, although many registration
services will bill and renew automatically unless
instructed otherwise. The most important ones
from a UK business viewpoint are the .com
and .co.uk domains – these are readily available
to anyone that wants one, as long as no-one
else has got there fi rst…
To get a domain you need to register it
through a domain registration service, or ask
your website developer to do so on your
behalf. If someone else is registering a domain
for you it is worth making sure that they
register it in your name as that makes any
future transfer (or sale) of the domain more
straightforward.
If your preferred domain name has already
been registered by someone else you can
always offer to buy it, as there is a thriving
market in domains. Domain prices are
infl uenced by factors such as how long a
domain has been registered, whether there
is a website associated with the domain
and how specifi c the name is (for examples,
bloggsphones.co.uk would be worth less than
mobilephones.co.uk).
If you feel that someone has registered a
domain that is directly related to your trading
name (known as squatting) there is a process
for resolving the situation but it’s a good idea
to seek specialist advice.
The most important domain names
from a UK business viewpoint are
the .com and .co.uk domains –
readily available as long as no-one
else has got there fi rst…
Dynamic Website
Most basic web pages are “static” which means
that they are the same for every user and the
pages are stored on the server the
way they will appear to users. With dynamic
web pages each user sees a page that is
generated on the fl y as they request it.
This means that the content and layout are
independent of each other with the content
being drawn from a database. This is ideal for
websites which will need updating regularly
(such as e-commerce sites) as only the
database will need changing rather than every
page featuring the changed information. It’s
also a very useful solution for large websites
such as directories, as it allows them to store
a few page layouts and then fi ll them from the
database rather than having to have hundreds
(or even thousands) of pages on the server.
Hosting
Put simply, the hosting of a website involves
providing space on a server and keeping that
server connected to the Internet. The amount
of space a site needs on the server and how
much Internet traffi c the site attracts have
a major infl uence on how much hosting will
cost. Other factors affecting hosting include
the software requirements of the website:
Does it need a database or specialist software
requirements such as Coldfusion, PHP or Java?
Companies providing hosting need to
provide a resilient service so will have to
consider issues such as auxiliary power
supplies, data backups, software and server
maintenance.
Server
This is the actual, physical computer that serves
(hence the name) the web pages, image fi les
etc to any users that request them. When
you’re browsing a website the whole process
should be completely invisible to you, but an
unreliable or overloaded server will soon make
itself apparent.
The next article will look at the components
of a website, covering HTML, databases,
software, Google Analytics and more. C
Further information
Loud-n-Clear.com runs the Internet Craft Fair
and specialises in websites for craft companies
Contact details: www.loud-n-clear.com
enquiries@loud-n-clear.com
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