Glossary of Internet Service Related Terms

WAIS

An acronym for Wide Area Information Servers, WAIS is a network information retrieval service that you can use to search for keywords or phrases in specially indexed files. Unlike Gopher, which searches files by their titles, WAIS engines search the full text of files and return a list of documents that contain the keyword you are searching for. Most search engines on the Web use the WAIS method of search and retrieval. Although the name "wide area" implies the use of large networks such as the Internet, WAIS is frequently used to index and retrieve documents on only one machine or on a LAN (local area network).

WAN

An acronym for Wide Area Network, WAN refers to a network that connects computers over long distances via telephone lines or satellite links. In a WAN, the computers are physically and sometimes geographically far apart.

Web Host

A web host is the company who actually provides the hardware, servers, backbone connections, backup system etc, where your web site is housed. It is their job to make sure your web site is available to site visitors on the World Wide Web around the clock.

Web Log

A Web log, for the uninitiated, is a popular and fairly personal content form on the Internet. A person’s Web log is almost like an open diary. It chronicles what a person wants to share with the world on an almost daily basis. Commonly known by its slang name, blog.

Web Page

A web page is a document created with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that is part of a group of hypertext documents or resources available on the World Wide Web. Collectively, these documents and resources form what is known as a website. You can read HTML documents that reside somewhere on the Internet or on your local hard drive with a software prgram called a web browser. Web browsers read HTML documents and display them as formatted presentations, with any associated graphics, sound, and video, on a computer screen. Web pages can contain hypertext links to other places within the same document, to other documents at the same website, or to documents at other websites. They can also contain fill-in forms, photos, large clickable images , sounds, and videos for downloading

Web Ring

A web ring is a collection of subject-related websites. Web rings link sites with similar topics, allowing you to navigate from site to site.

Web Space

Disk space or web space is the amount of space you are allowed to take up on the web host's hard drive. In most cases this is limited, so that they can store many web sites on one hard drive or server. Most web sites can operate just fine under 20mb, but it is common now for basic hosting plans to include 100 to 200 mb.

Web Templates

Website templates are ready-made web designs created for you to use as a basis for fast and high-quality web development. Just add your text and pictures to our web templates and you will have a functional and individual website ready for upload.

WebCrawler

Metasearch engine powered by InfoSpace.

Webmaster

A webmaster is a person in charge of maintaining a web site. This may include writing HTML files, setting up more complex programs, and responding to e-mail. Many sites encourage you to mail comments and questions about the site's web pages to the webmaster.

Website

A website is a collection of network services, primarily HTML documents, that are linked together and that exist on the Web at a particular server. Exploring a website usually begins with the home page, which may lead you to more information about that site. A single server may support multiple websites.

Website - Web site

Web pages and their necessary images, media files, and other files collectively make up a web site. This collection appears to users as a single web server, and share the same basic URL. Also, web site.

Whois Database

A searchable database maintained by Network Solutions, which contains information about networks, networking organizations, domain names, and the contacts associated with them for the com, org, net, edu, and ISO 3166 country code top-level domains. Also, the protocol, or set of rules, that describes the application used to access the database. Other organizations have implemented the Whois protocol and maintain separate and distinct Whois databases for their respective domains.

WinSock

Short for Windows Sockets, WinSock describes a standard way for Windows programs to work with TCP/IP. You use WinSock if you directly connect your Windows PC to the Internet, either with a permanent connection or with a modem by using SLIP or PPP.

WinZip

A WinZip is a compression program for Windows that allows you to "zip" and "unzip" Zip files, as well as other standard types of archive files.

Wizard

A self-activating program that guides you through a simple set-up routine for a particular feature or application.

World Wide Web

The exact definition of the World Wide Web (popularly known as the Web) varies, depending on whom you ask. Three common descriptions are: A collection of resources (Gopher, FTP, http, telnet, Usenet, WAIS, and others) that can be accessed via a web browser. A collection of hypertext files available on web servers. A set of specifications (protocols) that allows the transmission of web pages over the Internet. You can think of the Web as a worldwide collection of text and multimedia files and other network services interconnected via a system of hypertext documents. Http (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) was created in 1990, at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, as a means for sharing scientific data internationally, instantly, and inexpensively. With hypertext, a word or phrase can contain a link to other text. To achieve this, CERN developed a programming language called HTML, that allows you to easily link to other pages or network services on the Web.

Worm

A destructive virus that does not infect other programs, but does make copies of itself infecting additional computers on network connections. Like all viruses, worms can destroy programs and files.

WYSIWYG

An acronym for "what you see is what you get". The Macintosh provides a WYSIWYG screen display. What you see on the screen is what you will get on printed output, as accurately as the screen can render it, or in the case of WYSIWYG website builders, what you see on the site builder screen is how your web page will look. Pronounced "wizzy-wig".