The words on the board
46 terms that turn up on website quotes and in our posts, one plain sentence each. Where a post explains the idea properly, the entry links to it.
- Accessibility
- Whether people with a disability, or on a small screen or slow connection, can use a site; measured against the WCAG standard.Read the post
- Analytics
- A count of visits and what visitors did, collected by a small script; privacy-friendly versions do it without cookies.
- Astro
- The framework we build most sites with; it turns components and content into plain HTML files and adds JavaScript only where a page needs it.Read the post
- Build
- The step that turns source code and content into the finished files a browser can load; it runs once per change, not once per visitor.Read the post
- Cache
- A saved copy of a file kept close to the visitor so the next request is answered without going back to the origin.
- CDN (content delivery network)
- Many servers around the world holding copies of your site so each visitor is served from one nearby; also called the edge.Read the post
- Client-side app
- A site where the browser downloads a JavaScript application and draws the pages itself; powerful for tools, slow for brochures.Read the post
- CMS (content management system)
- Software with an admin screen for editing pages; WordPress is the best-known example, and a Git-backed CMS does the same job without a database.Read the post
- Commit
- One recorded change to the source, with who made it, when, and why; the unit of history in a repository.Read the post
- Component
- A reusable piece of a page, such as a menu or a price table, written once and used wherever it is needed.Read the post
- Content collection
- A folder of content files, such as blog posts, with a schema that rejects any file missing a required field before it can be published.Read the post
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's three page-quality measurements: how fast the main content appears (LCP), how quickly the page responds to taps (INP), and how much it shifts while loading (CLS).Read the post
- Deploy
- Publishing a finished build to the hosting network; each deploy is kept, so the previous one can be restored.Read the post
- DNS (domain name system)
- The directory that turns your domain name into the address of the server that should answer; its records decide where the website and email go.Read the post
- DNS record
- One line in your domain’s directory entry: A and CNAME records point the website, MX records point email, TXT records carry proofs such as SPF and DKIM.Read the post
- Domain name
- The address people type, such as dispatchweb.com.au, licensed from a registrar for a fixed term; in Australia the .au rules are set by auDA.Read the post
- Edge
- The servers closest to the visitor in a global network; a static site lives entirely there, with no single origin server to fail.Read the post
- Field data
- Speed measurements collected from real visitors in Chrome, as opposed to lab data from a single test run.Read the post
- Git
- The version-control system that stores every change to a site as a commit with a full history, so any past state can be inspected or restored.Read the post
- Honeypot
- A hidden form field that people never see and fill in, but automated spam does; a submission with it filled is dropped.Read the post
- Hosting
- Everything that keeps a site reachable: file storage, the network that serves it, certificates, deploys and monitoring; quotes vary in how much of that they mean.Read the post
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- The three languages a browser understands: HTML for structure and words, CSS for appearance, JavaScript for behaviour.
- Hydration
- The step where a page that arrived as HTML runs its JavaScript so the interactive parts start working; until it finishes, buttons look ready but are not.Read the post
- Island
- A small interactive region, such as a form, that carries its own JavaScript on an otherwise static page; the rest of the page needs none.Read the post
- Lab data
- A speed measurement from one controlled test run, such as Lighthouse; repeatable, but not the same as what real visitors experience.Read the post
- Lighthouse
- Google's free page-testing tool; it scores performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO out of 100.Read the post
- Nameserver
- The server that holds your domain’s DNS records; changing it moves the whole directory entry, which is why it is not touched on launch day.Read the post
- Pipeline
- The fixed sequence a change goes through, from commit to build to checks to deploy, so nothing reaches the live site by hand.Read the post
- Plugin
- An add-on that extends a CMS; each one is code from a third party that must be kept updated, and most CMS security holes are in plugins.Read the post
- Preview deployment
- A private web address showing a change before it goes live, so you can check it on your own phone and give feedback.Read the post
- React
- A JavaScript library for building interfaces out of components; we use it for forms and other interactive parts, not for whole pages.Read the post
- Registrar
- The company you license your domain name through; separate from the host, and the account to guard most carefully.Read the post
- Repository
- The folder, tracked by Git, that holds a site’s complete source and its history of commits.
- Rollback
- Restoring the previous deployment with one action when a change turns out to be wrong.Read the post
- Schema markup
- Structured data added to a page that tells search engines plainly what the page is about, such as a business, an article or an event.
- Security headers
- Instructions a site sends with every page telling the browser what not to allow, such as being embedded in another site or loading over plain HTTP.Read the post
- Server-rendered site
- A site where a server builds each page when it is requested, usually from a database; flexible, but there is a server to run, patch and pay for.Read the post
- Sitemap and robots.txt
- Two small files that list your pages for search engines and say which ones they may index.
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC
- Three DNS records that prove email claiming to be from your domain really is; without them, messages from your site’s forms land in junk.Read the post
- Static site
- A site delivered as finished files with nothing to compute per visit; fastest to load, cheapest to host, and with no server to break into.Read the post
- TLS certificate (SSL)
- The proof that lets a browser show the padlock and encrypt the connection; issued free and renewed automatically on a modern host.Read the post
- TTL (time to live)
- How long the world may keep a copy of a DNS record before checking again; lowered before launch day so the change is seen quickly.Read the post
- Turnstile
- Cloudflare's check that a form was submitted by a person, done without the picture puzzles of older CAPTCHAs.Read the post
- TypeScript
- JavaScript with types added, so a whole class of mistakes is caught while code is written rather than by a visitor.Read the post
- Uptime monitoring
- An automatic check, every few minutes, that the site answers; the host is told before the client is.
- WCAG
- The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the international standard for accessible websites; level AA is the usual floor.Read the post
Missing a word you were quoted? Put it in the notes of the brief builder and we will define it in the reply.