Explain

The computer industry is flooded with acronyms, and the realm of the World Wide Web is no exception. Web designers and developers find it easier to discuss the tools and aspects of their trade by using lots of these abbreviated terms. But to the potential client, wading through this flood of letters can be overwhelming. We want to be able to communicate with you effectively so you know what we mean when we say, “Your site is being built into a basic structure based on the mockups we gave you using XHTML and CSS.” Unless you have a frame of reference for XHTML and CSS, that statement probably means little to you.

Below are some explanations of what common web designer lingo means, especially the acronyms.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language. This is the encoding given to text documents, containing the content of your site, that tells a browser how to display the page in terms of structure, format and design elements such as pictures and tables. See also XHTML.
XHTML
eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. HTML has gone through several versions since its original inception. Previously these were marked with version numbers similar to lots of software out there. HTML 2, HTML 3.2, HTML 4 and HTML 4.01 are common versions of the specification (HTML isn't really software, it's a set of agreed-upon rules for marking up Web documents). Among the most recent developments to come after the HTML 4.x series is XHTML, which uses elements of XML to ensure properly structured documents. Why does this matter? Old versions of HTML were pretty forgiving in terms of a document's structure; sloppily coded documents were often fudged during the rendering process which was nice for amateur designers, but hard on browser developers, third party maintainers and a nightmare for developing standards. XHTML addresses these problems and makes using other technologies like CSS much easier.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a common companion to HTML or XHTML. We've mentioned that HTML tells a browser how to display a document in a Web Browser. The problem with this is that each document in a site must then be told how it should be displayed, even if all the documents are pretty similar in appearance. What if you want to change one small element of the template? You'd have to change that element in all the HTML for each page. Stylesheets allow an HTML document to reference one external explanation of a documents structure and design so the HTML itself is mostly only concerned with the content. Web gurus often refer to this interaction as “separation of content and structure” which simply means that changes to the content should not affect the structure and vice versa.
PHP
PHP: Hypertext Pre-processor. PHP is an actual programming language that executes code on a Web Server and integrates tightly with HTML to allow for dynamic web pages. PHP is powerful, stable and free which allows developers familiar with PHP to deliver amazingly powerful web applications quickly and at a low cost compared to more proprietary solutions.
HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol. This is the means by which HTML and other Web documents are transmitted from a server to a client.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. FTP is another connection technology using the Internet to move files from one computer to another. In terms of web development, many developers use FTP to move Web documents such as HTML and CSS files to the web server.
XML
eXtensible Markup Language. XML is a markup language somewhat similar to HTML except that it is far more flexible in that it can be used to describe the form and structure of any type of document, not just a Web document. See also XHTML.
URL
Universal Resource Locator. A URL (sometimes referred to as a URI or Universal Resource Indicator) is the technical name for a website address. Full URLs include the name of the protocol (http://), usually the subdomain (often www.), the domain name (something.com for example), and any additional parameters or directories. The term URL is preferred by professionals in the tech industry because while the phrase “web address” is more intutive, technically speaking a web address is a series of numbers and dots known as an IP Address. Removing the term “address” from one phrase helps distinguish between the two.
Web Browser
A program that accepts HTTP transfers of Web documents (commonly HTML) and renders them into a viewable web page.
Web Server
A computer with a dedicated, persistent connection to the Internet that accepts requests to deliver Web documents and transfers them via HTTP to the client making the request. Web Server refers also to the suite of software on a computer such as this which facilities the requests and deliveries. Server software is often referred to by its commercial name to avoid confusion, for example, Apache or IIS.
Web Client
Browsers are sometimes referred to as clients; this comes from the computer science terminology describing networked computers with a relationship known as client/server. One computer acts as the requesting machine (client) and the other acts as the providing machine (server). Browsers aren't the only applications which can be considered clients; any software that requests documents from a Web Server can be a client. Sometimes email programs fetch Web documents. When they do so, they are considered to be Web Clients for the purpose of that exchange.
Render
The process which a browser goes through to convert HTML and related Web documents into a viewable web page.
Domain
Also called a Domain Name, this is the part of the URL that distinguishes your site from another. Your domain name can be anything you like but it cannot include spaces (many people use dashes or just squish multiple words together like “sanfranciscogiants”) and should be memorable and identifiable with your business. Domain names are sold by companies called “registrars” who lease the names to people for certain periods of time. You cannot have the same domain as someone else so you may have to come up with several different choices. Domain names often end in “.com” but they can also end in .net, .org, .info or many other suffixes. These suffixes are known as Top Level Domains.

Hopefully you have a better idea of what some of the terms surrounding web design are all about. We're always happy to answer any additional questions you might have.

So now you may have a good idea of what a site could do for you and you can talk intelligently about them, the missing piece is how to get the word out once your site is up and running. What about Search Engines?