Key Web Development Terms and What They Mean

It's hard enough to understand what the term “web development” means, without having to then get a grasp on all the jargon that is commonly used in the web development industry. For some reason the IT industry tends to complicate everything by using acronyms widely, perhaps no more so than in web development where it can quickly become difficult to differentiate your CMS from your CSS and your URL from your URI. To try to help you out a bit, here is a beginners list of definitions:

CMS translates to Content Management System which is a particular type of software application. In web development a CMS is used to format, manage, and store web content such as text and images. Blog software is an example of a commonly used CMS.

CSS translates to Cascading Style Sheet. CSS is a particular document format that dictates a set of style rules for incorporation into a HTML document. It provides a method of separating the actual content of a web page from the information used to determine its formatting and presentation and is used extensively in web development.

GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. It is a program that allows a programmer working on a website or web development to see the way their feature or application will appear and function on the internet, while they are working on it.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the language used to structure online content during web design and web development. As we have seen above, HTML is used to structure the content on a website, while CSS is used to format the content.

Javascript is another language used in web development. Alongside HTML it is one of the most widely used scripting languages in the web today.

The term “Open Source” refers to a method of licensing software which offers free access to the software source code. This means that the software can be freely downloaded and developed with all contributions and modifications incurring no cost.

PHP translates to Hypertext Pre-processor. PHP is another popular scripting language which can be embedded into HTML where it is often used to develop mini-applications. PHP can also be used in the construction of larger and more complex applications. It is a Server Side language.

Server Side is a term used to describe a scripting process which is performed by the server, prior to the webpage being displayed to the user.

URI stands for Uniform Resource Indicator, while URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Both terms refer to what is commonly known as a web address, for example: http://www.designawebsite.com.