Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
on Internet and Web site related Terms


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What is a Domain Name?
A domain name or website address is a unique name for an individual computer source on the Internet. An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources, also known as IP addresses.

Registering an identifying domain name is the most important step toward establishing your Internet presence. Domain names are all about human memory. When you search for available names, brainstorm a while and don't settle on a name that you are not 100% sure about. Think about how to make your domain name easy to associate with your business, recall and spell.

Remember, you are buying property on the Internet, a great domain name address is as valuable as Boardwalk in Monopoly. However, if you can't seem to land there or on Park Place, several houses on Atlantic Avenue will actually generate even more traffic.

However, most short and telling domain names haver been registered many years ago. Don't worry that the best names are generally taken, you will need to use your imagination to invent a domain name with keywords relevant to your purpose or business.

If you are set on a particular name that happens to be taken, a last resort is to use a hyphen.


How do I establish and purchase my Domain Name?
You must register your domain with a registrar to officially establish ownership of the domain name. We recommend using the best and most affordable (about $10/year) in the industry www.godaddy.com


How do I find out if the name I want to use is available?
It is important to remember that not all domain names are live, thus a name that you enter in your browser or search for in Google may not be available for registration. Here's how you can find out available domain names using Godaddy:

1. Go here: www.godaddy.com
2. Use the form for Domain Names
3. Enter a domain name and see if it is available
4. They will come back with a list of available names
5. Decide which one you want and buy it
6. Optionally sign up for GoDaddy’s hosting service


Should I buy more than one Domain Name?
Absolutely! For ten Dollars each domain per year it is a good idea to register as many domain names related to your main domain as possible. You may want to register other extensions as well.

Please bear in mind that if your desired domain name has already been taken as .com, we don’t advise registering another extension like .net or .org. It is most likely that people automatically type the .com extension and take away your traffic. Just keep searching for the right .com extension.

We also recommend registering names with a common spelling error. Traffic to your site is key and you can always forward the other domain names to your main domain name.


What is an IP address?
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a numerical label that is assigned to a computer connected to a network, i.e. an intranet or the global Internet also known as World Wide Web.


What is the World Wide Web?
The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.

The first web page was published on November 3rd, 1992: www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html


What is DNS (Domain Name System)?
The DNS was established in 1984, almost a decade before commercial traffic was a part of the Internet. The Domain Name System maps IP numbers to names of hosts or websites i.e. www.rumler.com. Thus, DNS converts the domain name requested into an IP address.

Basically, it is a way for us to use unique and memorable words for domain names instead of unique and unmemorable numbers. Imagine having to type in http://128.120.65.210 instead of www.google.com


What is an URL?
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage it is the address of a web page on the World Wide Web.

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) was created in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee as part of the URI. A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. In other words: the URI defines an item's identity, while the URL provides a method for finding it.


What is HTML?
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, which is the predominant markup language for web pages.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc. as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. HTML elements consisting of tags surrounded by <angle brackets> within the web page content. It can include or can load scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of Web browsers and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the appearance and layout of text and other elements.


What is a CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System, a software system used to manage and control a dynamic collection of Web site content. CMS software provides authoring and other tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease.

Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces. Unlike Web-site editing software, a CMS allows non-technical users to make changes to a website with little training.

Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, or artifacts that might be needed by the system. A presentation layer displays the content to Web-site visitors based on a set of templates.


What is an API?
The acronym API stands for Application Programming Interface. An Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, much in the same way that a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.

The practice of publishing APIs has allowed web communities to create an open architecture for sharing of content and data between communities and applications. In this way, content that is created in one place can be dynamically posted and/or updated in multiple locations on the web.

Examples:
1. Photos can be shared from sites like Flickr and Photobucket to Social Network sites like Facebook and MySpace.
2. Content can be dynamically posted. Sharing comments made on Twitter to a Facebook account for example is enabled by Twitter and Facebook's APIs.
3. Video content can be embedded on sites, in this example of an embedded YouTube Video, where the content is served by YouTube on a third party site


What is a widget?
A web widget is a small program that you can easily put on your website, blog, or personalized start page. A common example of a widget that most of us run across almost every day are those Google advertisements. These ads are produced by placing a small piece of code on the web page. The hard part - choosing an advertisement that matches the content and displaying that ad - is done by Google.