Jargonbuster

A-C

A-B testing is a website optimisation technique that involves sending half your users to one version of a page, and the other half to another, and watching the web analytics to see which one is more effective in getting them to do what you want them to do (for example, sign up for a user account). It can be a great tool for evolving your platform.

Aggregation is the process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide RSS feeds. The results may be displayed in an aggregator website like Bloglines or Google Reader, or directly on your desktop using software often called a newsreader. Aggregation is increasingly important as content becomes more distributed around the web. (For more on how aggregation can help you harness the free functionality of other websites for your own, see building the technology.)

Alerts some search engines allow you to specify words, phrases or tags to be checked periodically, with results of those searches delivered by email. You may also be able to read the searches by RSS feed. This form of search allows you to monitor when you, your organisation, your website or a blog item has been mentioned elsewhere, and so respond if you wish.

Avatars are graphical images representing people. They are what you are in virtual worlds. You can build a visual character with the body, clothes, behaviours, gender and name of your choice. This may or may not be an authentic representation of yourself.

Asynchronous communications are independent of time or place, and messages go to and fro rather than appearing in one place at almost the same time (synchronous communication). Examples of asynchronous communication are email lists, bulletin boards and forums.

An archive may refer to topics from an online discussion that has been closed but saved for later reference. On blogs, archives are collections of earlier items usually organised by week or month. You may still be able to comment on archived items.

Authority is used on many websites and forums as a way to rank contributors, based on many different factors, often including length of participation on the site, number of contributions, and peer review. Authority is also used to rank websites and blogs against each other, for example, as a way to provide search results.

Back channel communications are private emails or other messages sent by the facilitator or between individuals during public conferencing. The backchannel can be a public, advertised space for conversation, or an organic channel that emerges online. They can have a significant effect on the way that public conversations go.

Back-end (as opposed to front-end) means the code that runs behind the scenes on a website or piece of software. Back-end developers write the database queries and complex coding functions which do the hard work behind the scenes. They work more closely with sysadmins and other more technical people, although their work is still closely tied to the business objectives and front-end designs of the user experience.

Blogs (short for ‘web logs’) are websites with dated items of content appearing in reverse chronological order, usually self-published by individuals. Entries – sometimes called posts - may have keyword tags associated with them, are usually available as feeds, and often allow commenting. Traditional websites have pages as their main building blocks, with an address link (URL) for each page, and menus to provide navigation between them. Blogs are websites where the items of content - for example text, photos, video, audio - have URLs plus other ways of identifying them by keywords - known as tags. This means you can search for individual items on the internet, and also pull items out of their sites and remix them through feeds and aggregation. Blogs are generally designed in journal format, with most recent items at the top of a page, and written in a conversational, personal style, giving the author an authentic voice online. Blogs can offer readers the opportunity to comment on, and link to items. Blog posts usually have both tags and categories to help identify the topics and ideas attributed to the content. There are many popular, free blogging platforms to choose from; the most used of those being Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress. (See also our how-tos on getting online quickly with Wordpress, and creating a blog strategy)

Blogmemes are concepts created by bloggers, campaigners or advertisers that encourage bloggers to write a post to a particular format, such as “list five secrets about yourself”, and then invite other bloggers to do the same. Sometimes these are created for the amusement of bloggers themselves, but they can also be a powerful way to encourage bloggers to write about your project or ideas. They can also be a good way to annoy important bloggers though, and they should be used with caution. (Here’s an example of one that worked: the 2008 Mindapples blog campaign.)

A blogroll is a list of links displayed in the sidebar of blog, showing the sites and blogs the author/s reads regularly. It can be a good way to namecheck and endorse other writers who you respect and want to work with in the future.

Bookmarking is saving the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser, or on a social bookmarking site like delicious.com. Using social bookmarking, the user can add tags (one or more), allowing others to easily use the research too. One website, blog, or anything else online can be tagged by any number of users, all with the same or different tags. Groups can also identify tags they want to use and make collaborative research easier. (See also how to use Delicious.com)

A browser is the tool used to view websites, and access all the content available onscreen or by downloading. Browsers may also have features including the ability to read feeds, write blog items, view and upload photos to photo sharing sites. Browsers have become the central tool for using social media as more and more tools previously used on our desktops are becoming free online. The most commonly used browsers are Firefox (Open source from Mozilla), Internet Explorer (from Microsoft) and Safari (from Apple).

Bulletin boards were the early vehicles for online collaboration, where users connected with a central computer to post and read email-like messages. They were the electronic equivalent of public notice boards. The term is still used for forums.

Categories are ways of organising content into sections or topics for browsing or searching. Typically categories form the basis of a taxonomy, whilst unstructured keywords attached to content as tags are used to form a folksonomy.

Chat is interaction online, either within a web site or with a tool outside of your browser, that allows for a number of people adding text items one after the other into the same space at (almost) the same time. A place for chat – chat room – differs from a forum because conversations happen in “real time”, rather as they do face to face.

Clickthroughs are counted every time a user clicks on a banner advertisement (or other elements of a webpage) and visits the link it is promoting. Effective banner advertisements usually aim at a good ratio of clickthroughs to page impressions.

Comments Blogs and other kinds of websites can allow readers to add comments under items, meaning users can contribute user-generated content to the site but the site author(s) can control the topics of discussion. A site may also provide a feed for comments, as well as for main items, so readers can keep up with conversations without having to revisit the site. Most blogs and websites allow for many different permission settings letting authors/administrators control what kind of comments can be made, and by whom. (For more on managing user comments, see how to manage an online community)

Conferencing can be any kind of multi-user discussion, face-to-face or online. ‘Web conferencing’ typically refers to live, synchronous conversation online, where participants are invited to a virtual meeting. The term ‘conference’ can include asynchronous conversations between a group of people though, organised around topics, threads, and a theme or subject - such a those found in a forum.

Communities are groups of people communicating, socialising and collaborating, through the internet, face-to-face or through other channels. They may simply have a shared common interest to talk about, like a neighbourhood group, or have come together for some purpose such as to learn from each other or find solutions (like IDeA’s Communities of practice). Communities may also emerge from conversations between people online, such as bloggers. List or forum-based communities can be difficult to join up with blog-based communities because of the different ways they operate technically. While communities do emerge organically, some community-building is necessary if there are specific goals to achieve. Online communities may use email lists, forums, blogs, social networking groups or other services where content is centralised.

Connections As high-speed, always-on, broadband connections become more widely available, it is easy to forget that the speed and nature of internet connection available to people on a network will determine what tools they can use. If people are still using slow telephone dialup they may have problems with video and voice over IP. If they don’t have an always-on connection, Web-based tools will be less appealing because work on them can only be done when connected.

Content is used here to describe text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the internet.

Content management systems (CMS) are sometimes described as the Swiss Army knives of web technology. They are software suites offering the ability to create static web pages, document stores, blog, wikis, and other tools. CMSs have the advantage of offering comprehensive solutions - but can be challenging to configure, and each of the different tools may not be quite as good as a stand-alone version. Unless you have some technical skills, they are best suited for situations where you can employ a web developer to work with you, and provide some continuing support.

CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’ and is an old but still widely-used term for keeping track of contact data and the messages you send to people. Often large companies build complex tracking systems linked into invoicing, sales or membership systems, but there are a number of cheap basic systems on the market now too. Social networks and network analysis tools are challenging and augmenting the traditional ‘pipeline’ CRM tools.

CSS style sheets specify the visual appearance of elements in a webpage, such as “titles are orange 16pt Arial”. Each style defined in the sheet works everywhere across the site to preserve consistency, hence the term “Cascading Style Sheets”.

Cyberspace has been widely used as a general term for the internet or World Wide Web. More recently blogosphere has emerged as a term for interconnected blogs.

D-F

Default, in computing, refers to the settings on any device that come “out of the box”. It may be used loosely to suggest “lowest common” ... so when trying to set up ways of collaborating online you may hear reference to email-with-attachments as the default. The challenge in social networking is that you may need to move from default mode to something customised to your requirements.

DTP stands for desktop publishing, and refers to software for, and the process of, laying out text and images for print.

To download is to retrieve a file or other content from an internet site to your computer or other device. See also upload.

Domain name is the URL address of the website, like Google.com

E-mail or ‘electronic mail’ is messages transmitted over the internet. These may be simply text, or accompanied by attachments like documents, images or other content.

E-mail lists, or e-mail groups, are important networking tools offering the facility to “starburst” a message from a central post box to any number of subscribers, and for them to respond. Lists usually offer a facility for reading and replying through a web page - so they can also operate like forums. This web page may offer an RSS feed - so joining up old and new tools. However, there is something of a divide between blog-based conversations and those on lists and forums because the former are dispersed across a network, and the latter don’t usually allow tagging or such easy linking.

E-marketing is just marketing using electronic tools, most commonly e-mail, mobile and the web.

Embedding is a way to display content that is hosted elsewhere on the web (like videos on YouTube or pictures on Flickr), on your website or blog without hosting the files yourself. Most websites that host such content provide the “embed code” for users to copy and paste onto their own sites.

Feeds are the means by which you can read, view or listen to items from blogs and other feed-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing and using an aggregator or feed reader. Feeds contain the content of an item and any associated tags without the design or structure of a web page. They can also be read by other websites, allowing the content of a feed to be embedded in different forms on a range of websites and platforms such as mobile sites.

A feed reader is a web-based or desktop tool that acts as an aggregator, gathering content from blogs and similar sites using RSS feeds so you can read the content in one place, instead of having to visit different sites.

Flaming is a destructive behaviour on chatrooms and forums where users insult each other and post deliberately offensive content. Some online communities are more tolerant of this behvaiour than others, but most moderators will remove offensive posts. Flaming can be done by people with genuinely strong feelings about a subject, but trolls do it to deliberately ‘inflame’ other users for their own enjoyment. (If you’re worried, take a look at our tips on Dealing with inappropriate content.)

Folksonomy Rather than classifying information top-down in a taxonomy, you can instead allow the users of your site (the ‘folk’) to add their own keywords and create a ‘folksonomy’ - a collection of unstructured tags which define the subject matter of the content. It means that the users define the way the content is organised, and although it is harder to create hierarchies and logical structures, folksonomies have the advantage of using language and relationships which are maintained by and make sense to the users.

Followers (see also pub-sub) are the individuals who subscribe to your RSS feed, have connected with you on a networking space (like Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr – anywhere that allows you to “friend” other users), or have joined a network based on your blog, website, or group.

Forums are discussion areas on websites, where people can post messages or comment on existing messages asynchronously – that is, independently of time or place. Chat is the synchronous equivalent. Before blogs developed, email lists and forums were the main means of conversing online. Forum discussions happen in one place, and so can be managed and facilitated in ways that blog conversations can’t because these are happening in many different places controlled by their authors. (There are some useful free forum tools listed in the Companion.)

Friends are contacts, usually on social networking sites, whose profiles you link to your profile and with whom you share information. On some sites like Facebook people have to accept the link to confirm the friendship; in others, not. More recently, some sites like Twitter have moved to a more flexible model of followers instead.

Front-end (as opposed to back-end) means the user interface on a website or other software tool. Front-end developers build the bits that the users can see, and make them quick, pleasant and easy to use. They work closely with designers and copywriters, and also make sure the code will work in all the different browsers and software platforms.

G-I

Groups are opt-in collections of individuals with some sense of unity around their activities, objectives, interests or values. They are bounded: you are in a group, or not. They differ in this from networks or communities, which are dispersed, and defined by looser connections. E-mail lists and forums sit easily with bounded groups, blogs with networks - although the match with tools is not entirely clear-cut. A group may use a blog, and an email list may serve a network.

Hashtags are used in Twitter to add a subject keyword to a post, such as #obama or #kebab

Hits are sometimes used in web analytics to measure the number of calls on your server. Loading one page can make many calls - one for each image you have included, and so on - so these numbers are not representative of the number of individual visitors to your website. They are useful for watching the loac on your servers though.

Hosting see web hosting.

HTML is the language that all webpages are written in. It’s a simple code for describing formatting and layout elements on a page, such as bold text, tables and images.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and refers to the system computers use to send webpages to each other.

Hyperlinks are the highlighted text or images that, when clicked, jump you from one web page or item of content to another. Bloggers use links a lot when writing, to reference their own or other content. Linking is another aspect of sharing, by which you offer content that may be linked, and acknowledge the value of other’s people’s contributions by linking to them.

Inbound links are the hyperlinks on other people’s sites to your site. For search engines, the quality and quantity of the sites that link to you are important for building your site’s authority; the text that is linked, and anchor text they use, increase your site’s relevance for those search terms.

Instant messaging (IM) is chat with one other person using an IM tool like AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger. The tools allow you to indicate whether or not you are available for a chat, and if so can be a good alternative to emails for a rapid exchange. Problems arise when people in a group are using different IM tools that don’t connect. One way around this is to use a common Voice over IP tool like Skype that also provides IM.

An intranet is a website or network that shares an organisation’s information systems with its employees. Sometimes the term refers only to the organisation’s internal website, but can also be a more extensive part of the organization’s computer infrastructure. The focus and purpose is usually on making processes more efficient by sharing information more effectively.

J-L

Javascript is a programming language that works in your browser to produce special effects on webpages, such as pop-up windows, animations and expanding menus.

Listserv was the first tool for managing lists of e-mail addresses for running mass mailings and e-marketing campaigns.

Load see servers.

Logging in is the process to gaining access to a website that restricts access to content, and requires registration. This usually involves typing in a username and password. The username may be your “real” name, or a combination of letters and/or numbers chosen for the purpose.

Lurkers are people who read but don’t contribute or add comments to forums. The one per cent rule-of-thumb suggests about one per cent of people contribute new content to an online community, another nine percent comment, and the rest lurk. However, this may not be a passive role because content read on forums may spark interaction elsewhere. Read more here about managing online communities.

M-O

Mashups are the combination of two or more web applications to create an integrated application for specific repurposing; for example, combining Google Maps technology with an SMS service to automatically map the location of users.

Microblogging is a variant of blogging, in which users write in very short posts such as the length of an SMS.

MP3 (short for “MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3”) is a compressed digital format for storing music, which reduced filesizes enough for them to be easily moved from computer to computer and stored in mobile devices – usually without significantly reducing playback quality.

Multivariate testing is a more complex form of A-B testing in which many versions of certain key webpages are delivered to different visitors, and their behaviours monitored to see which page is most effective at leading them to the right goals. It is an expensive process and usually used for large-scale commercial sites.

Newsreader see feed reader.

Newsletters Printed newsletters are one of the most popular ways of keeping network members up to date with developments, and these days e-newsletters are popular and well-established. Since all written material is likely to have been produced on a computer, it is fairly easy to offer it by email as well. That way people can easily re-use material. If it is genuinely a network newsletter, there should be scope for members to contribute.

Online means being connected to the internet, and also being there in the sense of reading or producing content.

Online marketing refers to any web-based activity to promote something.

Offline means not online, that is, not connected to the internet. It may refer to an unconnected computer, or activities taking place without the benefit (or perhaps distraction) of a connection.

Open source software is any computer software whose source code is open for users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in some form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner” and the main advantage is that it lets developers use each other’s work to make quick progress building software and websites. (Read more about the various technology options out there in Building the technology.)

P-S

Page impressions are counted each time an advertisement loads on a user’s screen. Any time you see a banner, that is an impression. The ratio of clickthroughs to page impressions is a good measure of a banner advertisement’s effectiveness.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is any service which allows you to pay money to a search engine or a commercial website to place advertising with them in return for a fee for each time the advert is clicked. This pricing structure ensures you only pay for real traffic to your site, rather than paying for page impressions.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is a type of file format created by Adobe for sending print documents electronically. They preserve layout exactly so they work well for brochures, but they aren’t as navigable as HTML pages and can sometimes take a long time to download.

Peer-to-peer refers to direct interaction between two people in a network that bypasses the central organiser. In that network, each peer will be connected to other peers, creating huge opportunities for sharing, learning and collaborating.

Permalink is the address (URL) of an item of content, for example a blog post, rather than the address of a web page with lots of different items. You will often find it at the end of a blog post.

Photo sharing is uploading your images to a website like Flickr. You can add tags and offer people the opportunity to comment or even re-use your photos if you add an appropriate copyright license.

A platform is the framework or system within which tools work. That platform may be as broad as mobile telephony, or as narrow as a piece of software that has different modules like blogs, forums, and wikis in a suite of tools. As more and more tools operate “out there” on the web, rather than on your desktop, people refer to “the internet as the platform”. That has advantages, but presents challenges in learning lots of different tools, and getting them to join up.

A podcast is audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline. The name refers to Apple’s iPod system, and their iTunes store is still the main source of podcasts.

A post is an item on a blog or forum.

Presence online has (at least) two aspects. One is whether you show up when someone does a search on your name. If not, no good pretending to be an online guru. The second is whether you use tools that show you are available for contact by instant messaging, voice over IP, or other synchronous methods of communication.

Profiles are the information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. As well as a picture and basic information, this may include your personal and business interests, a “blurb” about yourself, and tags to help people search for like-minded people.

Proprietary software, unlike open source software, is owned by someone - whether Microsoft or a an individual developer. Some proprietary software may be free, and some open-source software may be sold. The issue is the terms under which the underlying code is available.

Pub-sub is a model for content sharing, where users can ‘publish’ content via the internet or other channels, and other users can ‘subscribe’ to their content and have it delivered to them (or just a notification) via their own choice of technology, such as a feed reader or SMS message.

Ranking (search engine ranking) is the position of your site in the search engine results for a particular search term. Each search engine has its own algorithm to determine where your site will rank. This usually involves looking at the relevance of the page to the term and the authority of the site itself. (Here are some tips on using blogging to improve your search engine ranking,)

Registration is the process of providing a username, password and other details when seeking to access a website that has restricted access (see logging in).

Relevance is a search engine concept that means the relevance of the content on your site, or a page on your site, to the search terms a user has entered into a search engine. The three primary factors for determining relevance are whether other sites use those terms to link to your site, the prominence of the term on your pages (whether it’s in the title tags, header tags etc.) and the number of times the terms appear on the page on your site (within reason!).

Remixing Social media offers the possibility of taking different items of content, identified by tags and published through feeds, and combining them in different ways. You can do this with other people’s content if they add an appropriate copyright license. See also Mashups.

Rich media usually means anything on a webpage except text and images, such as videos and Flash animations.

RSS feeds A feed is any stream of content designed to be read and republished by another website or a feed reader. This allows users and other websites to subscribe to content on blogs and other websites and have it delivered to them through a feed. RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication, and is the most common form of feed.

Search engines allow users to locate specific information on the internet by typing in search terms. Google is the best known and searches nearly all website content, including news, images and other content types. There are also specialist search engines concentrating on specific sites or topics. For example, Technorati concentrates on blogs, and as well as search terms you can also search the tags people have used to describe their content. In addition to public search engines, individual sites usually have their own search engines to let users search site content.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the collection of practices designed to increase traffic to your site from people searching online. It includes search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising, and other techniques for making your site and content more visible to internet users. (See also Top ten tips for SEM).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of refining the content and technology of your website to increase its visibility and ranking in search engines. This primarily involves looking at a website’s on-page optimisation, its inbound link profile and its accessibility to users and search engines. (See also Top ten tips for SEO.)

Search term Any word or combination of words typed by a user into a search engine – whether on your site or on a public search engine like Google.

Servers are special computers which host websites and web-based tools. They are just like ordinary computers, except that they are designed to talk directly to other computers rather than people. Servers need to be configured well to ensure your tools run smoothly (a task best done by a sysadmin or server expert) and if the server load gets too much - for example, if too many people try to use a website at once - it will crash and the website will become unavailable.

Sharing is offering other people the use of your text, images, video, bookmarks or other content by adding tags, and applying copyright licenses that encourage use of content. Sharing good content can be a great way to grow your community.

SMS messaging (which actually stands for ‘Short Messaging Service’) is the mobile phone technology for sending (usually) 140 or 160 character messages from one mobile device to another – or more recently, to other applications like TV voting systems and Twitter.

Social bookmarking, such as Delicious, allows users to store bookmarks online, either publicly or privately, for others to reference, find or follow. This kind of bookmarking, unlike saving bookmarks to your “favourites” folder or other browser-based folders, lets you access your bookmarks from any computer, any time. Social bookmarking relies on users tagging entries freely; allowing the tags to be searchable by other users.

Social media is a term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. The tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and sites to share photos and bookmarks.

Social networking sites, like Facebook, are online places where users can create a profile for themselves and socialise with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, video, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums and messaging. You can set up your own social network on Ning right now, using Nathalie McDermott’s handy guide.

A startpage - like Pageflakes, Netvibes or iGoogle Homepage - is web page that you can configure to pull in content from a range of web-based services including email, feeds from blogs and news services. It is a multi-purpose aggregator. Home pages used to be static affairs providing a sort of shop window for a site. They can now be your ever-changing window into the Net, and a way of organising a lot of different activities.

Streaming is a way of accessing audio or visual data that is hosted elsewhere on the web without downloading the file and opening it on your own computer.

Subscribing is the process of adding an RSS feed to your aggregator or newsreader . It’s the online equivalent of signing up for a magazine, but usually free. It’s a good way to start listening to the conversations out there.

Surveys and polls If members of a network have online access, it is really easy these days to use tools like surveymonkey.com to gather information from members and run polls.

Synchronous communications are those occurring in real time, like chat, audio or video. Face-to-face communication is synchronous too, as is telephony. The internet extends the scope for synchronous and asynchronous communication.

Sysadmin refers to the work of configuring, optimising and running servers and other technical infrastructure, and also to the people who do this work. Most projects outsource their server setup, meaning the sysadmin will be employed by the hosting company.

T-V

Tags are keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches and aggregation. 
Tags can usually be freely chosen - and so form part of a folksonomy - while categories are predetermined and are part of a taxonomy. (See also How to choose tags for your organisation.)

Taxonomy is an organised way of classifying content into categories and subjects, like a library classification system. By providing contributors to a site with a set of categories under which they can add content allows you to control how content is browsed and organised. It is the opposite, or sometimes used in conjunction with, folksonomy. For example, School of Everything classifies teachers using a top-down system of categories, and also a user-definied map of subjects.

Teleconferencing is holding a meeting without being in the same place, using a network connection and tools like Voice over IP, Instant Messaging, video, and whiteboards.

Terms of services are the basis on which you agree to use a forum or other web-based place for creating or sharing content. Check before agreeing what rights the site owners may claim over your content.

Threads are strands of conversation. On an email list or web forum they will be defined by messages that use the use the same subject. On blogs they are less clearly defined, but emerge through comments and trackbacks.

Title tags Every web page has a title embedded in the code, which appears in the title bar of your web browser and when you bookmark a page. These title tags are also often used by search engines to index your content and create your search listing.

Tool is used here as shorthand for a software applications, not just on your computer but also ones that are web-based.

A topic in an online discussion is an idea, issue - talking point - in a conversation that is made up of threads. It can also mean an area of a forum containing many threads around the same theme. Distracting posts that discuss the wrong subjects in a thread or forum area are usually accused of being “off-topic” and are sometimes moved or even deleted.

Trackback some blogs provide a facility for other bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. Blogger A may write on blog A about an item on blogger B’s site, and through the trackback facility leave a link on B’s site back to A. The collection of comments and trackbacks on a site facilitates conversations.

Troll A hurtful but possibly valuable user who, for whatever reason, is obsessed by, constantly annoyed with and deeply offended by everything you write on your blog. You may be able to stop them commenting on your blog, but you can’t ban them from commenting on other sites and pointing back to your blog, and you can’t ban them from posting things on their own blog that point back to your site. (See also flaming.)

Tweet is the name for a post on Twitter. Each tweet is 140 characters or less (so it can be sent in a text message), and can refer to other Twitter users and contain links to web content. If you say something particularly interesting, other Twitter users can also ‘re-tweet’ (RT) your posts and so circulate them to their followers as well.

User experience is shorthand for the many different experiences that users will have from your website or tools. Ensuring a smooth, pleasing experience for your users, particularly those who you are really aiming the service at, is crucial to getting them to use it regularly and tell others about it – which is why people spend so much time on user testing.

User-generated content refers to any text, photos and other material produced by people who don’t own or control the space and previously just consumed content. Typically it refers to users of a website posting content directly to a web platform, but can also refer to any public content created by participants of a project, such as videos or SMS messages.

Username Many sites ask you to choose a unique name for yourself on their site. The username you choose will sometimes be invisible to other users, or more commonly will be the name attached to your profile page, comments you make and other places you interact on the site.

User testing is any process for watching users engaging with your platform and finding out what they think of it. This enables you to find out what their experience is and what you could improve in the service you’re offering. For more on this, check out our guide to running user testing on your own website,

Upload To upload is to transfer a file or other content from your computer to an internet site.

URL stands for Unique Resource Locator, and is the technical term for a web address, like http://www.socialbysocial.com.

Video Many digital cameras and mobile phones take videos good enough to view on the internet. Sites like YouTube and blip.tv now make it easy to open an account, upload and share your videos. These sites will also provide some unique code for each video so you can, if you wish, embed the video in a blog post. Short interviews that “capture the moment” work well, particularly if you provide a text summary so people can easily decide whether or not to view. However, check whether the audience you are aiming at is likely to have a fast enough connection, and up to date browser, to view your video easily. (Get started now with our quick guide to making YouTube videos).

Video blogs (or ‘vlogs’) are dated streams of content just like a regular blog, but instead of posting text-based updates the author posts videos. Many people use YouTube and other video-sharing sites in this way.

Visits and visitors are two measures of website traffic. A visit is when a user has come to your site and browsed one or more pages; a visitor might come back for multiple visits and their identity is typically tracked with a cookie to give site administrators a clearer idea of how many people are using their service.

Viral marketing is a marketing technique where advertisers encourage ordinary people to talk about their products, either by creating a product that people want to talk about, or by creating content that people will want to forward to each other via e-mail or social networks – such as viral videos, Facebook applications, online quizzes or blogmemes.

Virtual worlds are online places like Second Life, where you can create a representation of yourself (an avatar) and socialise with other residents. Basic activity is free, but you can buy currency (using real money) in order to purchase land and trade with other residents. Second Life is being used by some voluntary organisations to run discussions, virtual events and fundraising.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) enables you to use a computer or other internet device for phone calls without additional charge, including conference calls. By using headphones and a microphone you can also free your hands to use instant messaging to keep a shared note of conversations, or use other virtual presence tools. You can use Voice over IP to do interviews for Podcasts. The best-known VOIP tool is Skype.

W-Z

The web is actually short for “world wide web” or “www”, the public network of computers and webpages that we have now come to know as the internet.

Web 2.0 is a term coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other internet-based services that promote community, collaboration and content-sharing, as distinct from the older content publishing and e-commerce websites (Web 1.0).

Web analytics or web stats include all the many ways of tracking and analysing user behaviours on a website. It includes numbers of visitors, server loads and amount of data downloaded, but also more complex information like the most common paths people take through the site, or the search terms people use to reach and navigate the site. We stats are a key part of watching your growing community, and also proving the impact of your project.

Web-based tools Google, Yahoo and a host of other commercial organisations provide an increasing range of free or low-cost tools including email, calendars, word processing, and spreadsheets that can be used on the web rather than your desktop. Provided you are happy to entrust your data to these organisations - and are always online when working - you can reduce your software costs significantly and forget about upgrades. (Check out our list of top ten tools for setting up a virtual office too).

Web browser see Browser.

Web conferencing see Conferencing.

Webcasting relies on streaming data to viewers who either watch/listen live or access an archived recording. These are often educational or have some element of training. Often these sessions are also called ‘webinars’.

Websites and webpages are the building block of the internet, constructed from HTML to present text, images and rich media within a browser.

Widgets are stand-alone applications you can embed in other applications, like a website or a desktop, or view on its own on a PDA. These may help you to do things like subscribe to a feed, do a specialist search, or even make a donation.

Whiteboards online are the equivalent of glossy surfaces where you can write with an appropriate marker pen and wipe off later. They are tools that enable you to write or sketch on a web page, and as such are useful in collaboration online.

A wiki is a web page, or set of pages, that can be edited collaboratively. The best known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia created by thousands of contributors across the world. Once people have appropriate permissions - set by the wiki owner - they can create pages and/or add to and alter existing pages. Wikis are a good way for people to write a document together, instead of emailing files to and fro. You don’t have to use wikis for collaborative working - they can just be a quick and easy way of creating a web site. Although wikis are easy to use, that doesn’t mean everyone in a group will commit to their use with similar enthusiasm. See commitment, readiness.

Workshops A mix of formal and informal workshops can provide network members with opportunities to learn from experts and each other. However, not everyone likes organised workshops - so go for fun, playfulness and sociability too. (See also Using events to build engagement)

So, come on - what have we missed? If it isn’t here, you can Google it or look it up on Wikipedia - and then let us know!