I remember some of my first meetings as a developer with all these acronyms and terms being thrown about and not understanding what they meant.

To help you out I have composed a list of 30 web development terms that should help you better understand what is going on during your website process.

1. 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. This type of redirect is used to redirect a url from an old website page to the new website page.

2. 404

404 is an error message that a user sees when the page that was requested cannot be found.

3. API

Application Programming Interface is a set of rules defined by the publisher of the API that defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used.

4. Bounce Rate

This is the percentage of which a person leaves your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page itself.

5. Cache

Cache is temporary data storage that helps site speed by storing relevant information on your computer the first time you visit a website. The cache is then reused the next time a user connects to your site.

6. CTA

Call To Action, this can be text, image, banner using action-oriented language like “click here” to get the user to click and engage with the website.

7. CDN

Content Delivery Network is a network of servers that store duplicate copies of our web content allowing that content to be delivered to a user closer to their location allowing better performance.

8. CMS

Content Management System is a software that allows us to publish, modify, and organise different kind of digital content. Examples are WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla and make it possible to manage web sites and their content without any coding knowledge.

9. Crawl

This is when a search engine sends a bot to your website to gather information on pages that exist to update their database with the information it has gathered. A crawl is necessary to get indexed by search engines to get your web content listed in the results.

10. CRUD

Create, Read, Update, Delete is a term used in database management, it contains the four basic functions of a database.

11. CSS

Cascading Style Sheets, this code tells the browser how to display your website.

12. Cookies

This is data saved by your web browser on your computer.

13. DNS

The Domain Name System translates human readable domain names into IP addresses so browsers can load Internet resources.

14. Framework

A framework is a package made up of a structure of files and folders of standardised code (HTML, CSS, JS documents etc.). A good example is Bootstrap.

15. FTP

File Transfer Protocol for websites, this is how files are uploaded to the internet.

16. GUI

Graphical User Interface is a type of user interface that the user can interact with, as opposed to command-driven interfaces. A good example is source tree.

17. Hosting

Hosting refers to a web server where the files for your website are stored.

18. HTML

Hypertext Markup Language is the language that is used to build the layout of your website pages.

19. IDE

Integrated Development Environment is a software application that provides us with a programming environment that integrates tools needed for development & testing. Visual Studio Code is a good example of an IDE.

20. Javascript

Javascript is a programming language that is commonly used to create interactive functions within web pages.

21. JSON

JavaScript Object Notation is a human-readable data format for interchanging data usually used in APIs.

22. Meta Tag

A meta tag is an important HTML tag for SEO ranking as it stores information about the web page and can also determine what image/content to show when linked to from other sites.

23. Responsive Design

Responsive design is a website design that is based on the user’s device screen size.

24. REST

REpresentational State Transfer is a set of software design architectural guidelines for data transmission between client and server.

25. SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of creating and modifying content for the best visibility on search engines.

26. SSL

Secure Sockets Layer and is a standard security protocol for establishing encrypted links. This ensures that all data transmitted between the web server and the browser remains secure.

27. UX

User eXperience is the interaction a user has with an interface (such as an app or a website page).

28. User Interface (UI)

User Interface is the focus of the visual presentation of a website.

29. Wireframe

A wireframe is visual guide usually used in the first stages of design to  show the structure of a web page without any design elements.

30. WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG means “what you see is what you get.” It is a textarea field that has an interface that allows you to apply styles to text and insert graphics.