You might want to skim this list now, but mainly it’s here so I can link to the definition when I use a term elsewhere in this guide.
Anchor or Anchor link: An anchor is a point on a webpage that has its own URL, so you can create a link that jumps not just to the page, but to a particular point on the page. If the link is on the same page, clicking just makes it scroll to that location. Anchor links are used in this book to jump to definitions in this glossary.
Block editor: a way to edit the content of your posts and pages, which divides the content into “blocks” you can reposition. The alternative is the older “Classic Editor.”
CAPTCHA: a test to block spambots, consisting of a picture of distorted letters. Compare with the newer reCAPTCHA and hCAPTCHA.
Child page: You can, if you wish, arrange the webpages of your WordPress site in a hierarchy with “parent/child” relationships. This may or may not make a visible difference in the website. It does affect the way they’re organized when an administrator views a list of all the pages.
Child theme: A WordPress theme controls the look of the site. If someone wants to change something about the theme, they may clone it off to create a child theme and make their changes there. Parts of the theme they didn’t make changes to, are updated automatically when the parent theme changes.
Classic editor: a way to edit the content of your posts and pages, which resembles a word processor. See also “Block editor.”
Content area: the “body” of your page or post. You edit the content with a word processor-like editor or the Block editor.
Content boxes: a row of big, box-shaped links on your front page, usually with an icon in each box, to serve as navigation within your site.
CSS: short for Cascading Style Sheets, CSS is the language used to specify the fonts, colors, spacing, and arrangement of objects on your webpage. It’s normally best to let the themes and plugins figure out the CSS for us, but it’s sometimes useful to know enough CSS to override their selections with your own style rules.
CSV file: Abbreviaton for “Comma separated value”, this is a way of exporting tabular data as plain text that Excel and other spreadsheet programs will understand and let you edit as a spreadsheet file. It’s commonly used for exporting and importing data, maybe with you editing it in between.
Dashboard: the main control panel of your website, where you manage themes, plugins, and the options associated with them. Your hosting company’s control panel for your domain might also have a screen titled Dashboard, but when I use the word, I always mean the screen in your own website.
Favicon: a small image representing your website. It appears in various places depending on the browser, e.g. on the browser window tab or beside a bookmark in your browser’s bookmark list.
Featured area / Featured content: a way of highlighting certain information on your landing page, usually a row of three or four boxes linking to other pages on the site. See also content boxes.
Fixed: Stays at the same screen position as you scroll the rest of the page. See also floating, static, sticky.
Floating: an element that aligns left or right with text flowing around it.
Gallery: an array of thumbnail images that, when clicked, either link to or pop up additional content, usually a larger version of the image, often with a watermark.
Gutenberg: another name for the “block editor.”
hCAPTCHA: A newer spambot detection tool similar to reCAPTCHA.
HTML: the “language” used to describe a webpage’s structure and content.
Honeypot: a method of blocking spam on online forms, using a field spambots can “see” but humans can’t. If the field is filled in, the submission is ignored. Mostly doesn’t work because spambots have gotten too smart for that. Other methods include CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA, and quiz questions.
Infinite scroll: Referring to the “posts page” which lists blog posts, the page initially has one screen’s worth of data. If you scroll down, the page loads more entries to make the list longer, and if you continue scrolling you get a long long lists of all the posts. Facebook behaves similarly. The alternative (and default) is to display a limited number of entries and have next/previous controls to see more.
Lazy loading: A performance boosting technique where the browser waits to request images from the server until you scroll to the point in the webpage where those images are visible. This makes the page load faster initially at the price of an occasional small wait for a picture to appear.
Lossy: When used in discussing image compression, refers to a compression algorithm resulting in an image that’s not identical in appearance to the original, so there’s some “loss” of image quality. In many cases the difference is not noticeable, but compression of your uploaded images is generally “non-lossy” by default anyway.
Lightbox: in a gallery, a pop-up display of the enlarged image, with the rest of the screen darkened around it. Generally, you can navigate to previous and next images from there, like a slideshow.
Masonry: a grid-like layout, usually of images, which are the same width but differing heights. The left and right edges line up into columns, but the top and bottom edges don’t, so it looks like layers of bricks if you look at it sideways – hence the name.
Media: images, video, and other files uploaded for use on your site. This can include file attachments for download, such as PDF files or e-books.
Non-scrolling: same as sticky.
Parallax: an effect where the foreground scrolls at a different rate than the background, giving an illusion of depth.
PHP: the programming language WordPress, its themes, and plugins, are written in. Some plugins expect you to customize them by editing PHP code. Avoid those.
Plugin: a component that adds to the functionality of your theme. You may have multiple plugins.
Post: an entry in your blog.
ReCAPTCHA: that thing where they ask you to check a box or identify which pictures contain a boat to prove you’re human. Compare with CAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA.
SEO: An abbreviation for “search engine optimization”, a measure of how high up in web search results your website is likely to appear.
Shortcode: a special instruction in [square brackets], inserted into the content of a page or post. When the page is viewed, the shortcode is replaced with some special content — a button, a video, a contact form, whatever. Compare with WYSIWYG.
Site icon: same as favicon, except a site icon is generally larger so it can be used in places where a large logo is wanted, or shrunk down to serve as the favicon.
Site Tools: a screen in your hosting provider’s site for settings associated with your domain, such as WordPress installation, email accounts, and domain transfer. This may be called different names by different hosting providers.
Slider: an image area that displays a slideshow of images in turn, usually timed, with controls to let the viewer go forward and back.
SSL: Not to scare you by saying what it stands for, this is the way websites prove they are “the real” website and encrypt your communication with them. SSL is how your website gets the padlock icon. See also: TLS.
Static: refers to an object that remains in the same screen position as the rest of the page scrolls. Similar to sticky except the object doesn’t move at all. A common behavior for popups, chat windows, share buttons.
Sticky: objects that scroll with the rest of the page but will not scroll off the screen. E.g. a sticky menu may initially appear below a header graphic, but as the header scrolls off, the menu will stay “stuck” to the top of the screen area.
Theme: a component defining the overall look of your site, controlling layout, colors, fonts, and “responsiveness” to different device types. You have one theme active at a time.
TinyMCE: another name for the “classic editor.”
Toolbar: the dark control bar that always appears at the top of the window when you’re logged in to your WordPress site. There are also sometimes toolbars on other parts of the screen, e.g. the word processing buttons above the page content editor.
TLS: The newer and more secure version of SSL. When someone nowadays talks about SSL, they really mean TLS, but they still call it SSL because people are used to the old name.
Widget: an object that goes into a “widget area” provided by your theme layout. The widget will appear on every page or post. Examples of widgets are a supplementary menu, some text you type, a newsletter signup form, or a list of your recent posts.
Widget area: an area provided by a theme for you to insert custom content that is the same on every page or post. Generally, these appear as headers, footers, or sidebars. Different themes offer different numbers and types of widget areas. Some themes support selecting which widget areas will appear on a particular page, but generally it would be the same on all pages.
WYSIWYG: acronym meaning “what you see is what you get.” Refers to objects that look (more or less) the same during editing of a webpage as when the page is viewed.