SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP, WYSISYG, ABCDEFGHI…what’s with all of the letters? It gets confusing. They might be a lot of random letters to you, but they are actually very important for your website. Each of these web acronyms has an important meaning, and your web technology consultant should know their definitions and usage.
Here are some important ones:
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of affecting the placement and visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine results, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. In general, the higher ranked results are more frequently visited and highly coveted by business owners and marketing folks. Several factors affect this, including keyword rich and relevant textual content, images, videos, and downloadable resources.
HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
HTML has been the code that has run the internet for a long time.Even if you run a content management system or bogging software, your site is still displayed through your web browser using HTML code that is generated. Long ago, your web consultant opened up notepad and started typing this code; now it’s much more complex than that.
CMS: Content Management System
A CMS is installed onto your web server and your website is created through this.This allows anyone who has a valid username and password to add content or edit your site as needed. This has made the web much more user friendly to people who dread coding. It stores your information in a database, and the software will generate the HTML code needed to display your site in the web browser.
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
PHP is the technology that runs many CMS and blogging systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.If you need something to connect to a database or create some sort of action, your web technology consultant can use this to create it for you.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheet
Both HTML and sites that use CMS or blogging software typically use a CSS file to format the website, including colors, image location, text sizes and fonts, etc.
WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get
This has been something that many web development software people have been trying to create for many years, but it’s proven to be problematic at times. It can create a lot of extra code that makes it hard to troubleshoot if a problem arises on your website. Many people have moved from this to a CMS for ease of maintenance.
Are you confused yet?
As you can see, there are many “letters” that run the internet. Confused? Does it seem like a lot to learn? It’s possible for you to do this yourself with some education and trial, but you can save your time and resources by having a web technology expert worry about the “alphabet soup” for you.
You’ll end up with a quality product while allowing you to focus on what you are good at: your business.