Brand – Your brand is part of your corporate identity. It includes your logo, brand colours, etc. that distinguish you from your competition. It will also include your style of advertising and ‘personality’ of your business.

Corporate identity – This (for our purposes) relates to your company’s visual assets and brand design features (e.g. logo, brand colours, etc.)

Custom Coding – This is any computer software that is written exclusively for a customer

Domain – An internet domain is a specific address on the internet e.g. gearboxcreative.co.za. It is not the same as the URL, which is the map to your address.

Hosting – A hosting provider allocates space on a server to store a website’s files. Gearbox Creative has a dedicated server [see below] that only stores our clients’ websites, so no sharing of server space is necessary.

JPEG – ‘ Joint Photographic Experts Group’ – a format usually used to compress digital pictures so that they can be stored or emailed more easily.

Layout – The look and feel of your site as well as its structure [how the information on a site is organized and presented, so that the users know how to move through the site]

Maintenance – Every website has to be maintained [just like a car does] otherwise it will eventually break down. Ongoing maintenance ensures your site is always visible and is technically up to date.

Marketing strategy – This is the long-term plan to promote and sell your product. It will include who your customer base is and how best to decide how to reach them. Your website is an important channel in this regard.

Online Store – Where goods and services are sold over the internet, often called an eCommerce store.

Optimisation – This improves the efficiency of your website in terms of speed, UX, traffic to your site, mobile device optimisation, etc]

PDF format – This stands for ‘portable document format’, used for saving files that can easily be shared but cannot be modified.

PNG – ‘Portable Network Graphics’ is another form of compression and storage of images, popular with web designers because it allows manipulation of images with transparent backgrounds.

Server – A server is a computer program or device that provides a service to another computer program and its user. In a data centre, the actual computer that a server program runs on is also frequently referred to as a server. That machine might be a dedicated server or it might be used for other purposes. Gearbox Creative has a dedicated server based in Germany, which means high reliability, stable connections and better performance compared to shared server space.

Technical terms – The words or phrases specifically used in website development – many of which are explained in this Glossary!

‘Techies’ – The backroom boys and girls who develop your website.

URL – ‘Uniform Resource Locator’ is a map to take you to your address (your domain) and then it can navigate through your website e.g. https://www.gearboxcreative.co.za/home

User – Anyone who is interacting with your website

User experience [UX] – The interaction and experience your users have when they visit your website

User interface [UI] – This is the contact point between the user and their computer [e.g. the screen, the speed of the site, the visual elements of the design, etc]

Website – Your presence on the internet as a system of online pages relating to your business that appears under one domain name.

Website design – Planning and designing and developing a website that is user friendly, easy to navigate and that reflects your company’s corporate identity.

Website development – This includes the development of your website for hosting on the internet and includes design, content development, server and domain setup as well as security considerations of the site.

WordPress – This is the world’s most popular open-source content management system in the world, and powers two of every five websites [https://blog.hubspot.com/website/wordpress-stats], including Microsoft’s official blog as well as the Rolling Stones’ website. It is highly flexible and well-supported.