Admin Area
The part of the website that can only be reached by logging into WordPress, from here users can create, edit or remove content, and change the site’s settings.
Administrator
WordPress’s highest-level user role. Administrators have limitless access to the WordPress Admin Area.
Attachment
An attachment is the term used to refer to any media (images, video, etc) used within a post or page on a WordPress website.
Autosave
The act of saving your content automatically as you create it.
Avatar
The user icon or photograph that often appears next to the name or comments of that user.
Back End
Another term for the ‘Admin Area’.
Backlink
A backlink is simply a link to your website, from another website on the internet.
Blog
A blog is an online journal or website that displays information in reverse chronological order, with the most recent posts appearing at the top. It is a platform where a writer or a group of writers voice their thoughts on an individual topic.
Category
The primary means of organizing and grouping (i.e. categorizing) WordPress posts of a similar nature is a special type of predefined WordPress taxonomy.
Comments
A blog feature that allows readers to respond to posts by leaving a comment that will be displayed beneath the content of the blog post if approved by the author.
Content
The text, images, videos or other information stored within the website, typically within the posts and pages of the website.
CMS
A CMS (Content Management System) is a system for creating and managing content online.
Dashboard
The primary administration screen within the back end of a WordPress website. This is the screen that appears after logging in and displays different data that users can enable, disable and move around on the screen through special admin screen widgets.
Default Theme
A theme that is pre installed onto a new WordPress installation.
Dedicated Hosting
A web hosting service in which its own server is assigned to the user, which is entirely dedicated to running their software and usually has complete control over its settings.
Domain Name
A domain name is the website address that people type to visit your website in the browser’s URL bar (e.g. www.website.com).
Excerpt
A summary or condensed description of a blog post that typically appears in search results, RSS feeds and anywhere in the theme it’s been programmed to do so, such as on archive and category pages (if you’ve entered one).
Featured Image
A specific image that can be uploaded by the user and assigned to a particular post or page.
Footer
The part of a website that is usually shown at the bottom of the page.
Front End
As opposed to the back end, which is only visible by admins who log in to your website, the front end is the part of the site that visitors who come to the site see and interact with.
Gravatar
An avatar that is typically linked to the email address of a user, so that it can appear automatically wherever the user enters his/her email address (usually used in forums/commenting systems).
Header
The part of a website that is usually shown at the top of the web page.
Hosting
A type of hosting service that provides users with their own Internet-connected server space which is used to serve files (which may take the form of a website) to users who are able to access/view them via web browsers.
HTML
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the main programming language that can be displayed in a web browser for creating web pages (and other information).
IP Address
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a numerical label allocated to computers, printers, mobile devices, etc. that connect to the Internet through a network that uses the Internet Protocol to communicate.
Media
Media commonly refers to forms of content other than text, such as photographs and video.
Page
A page is a web page with its own unique URL. In WordPress, pages are used for content that will not drastically change – such as contact pages, about us pages and so on.
Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual blog posts, pages, categories etc. The URL to each post or page should be permanent and never change, which is why it’s called a permalink.
Plugin
A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website.
Post
A post on a WordPress website is simply a blog post, also known as a published article. Posts are blog content listed on your blog page, each time you publish a new post, it appears at the top of the page.
Responsive
A responsive website is a website that is designed to fully functional and accessible on any screen size or device, for example, a site is responsive if it works on computers and mobile devices.
Role
WordPress uses Roles to give the website owner the ability to control what each user has access to. There are six pre-defined roles available and each of them have different capabilities, so it is important to give the right role to each user.
RSS
RSS is a type of web feed that allows users and applications to receive regular updates from a website or blog.
SEO
SEO (Search engine optimization) is a collection of techniques and methods used to help improve your website’s search engine ranking.
Server
A computer that is permanently connected to the internet for the purpose of hosting websites.
Sidebar
A sidebar on a WordPress website is a widget-ready area used by themes to display content that is separate to the main content on your website.
Slug
A WordPress slug is a specific part of URL which identifies a particular page on a website in an easy to read form.
Tag
A WordPress tag is a secondary (after categories) option to categorise and group your posts. Unlike categories, tags are completely optional but can help users to find other similar content on your website.
Tagline
A short (often catchy) phrase that usually resides under the main title or logo of a blog – usually used to try and convey the character/meaning of the website in only a few concise words.
The WordPress tagline is a short description for your website, which is often catchy, think of the tagline as your website’s slogan.
Taxonomy
In WordPress, a taxonomy is a way to group posts together based on a select number of relationships. By default, a typical post would have two types of taxonomy called Categories and Tags, which are a convenient way to make it easy for visitors to find related content on your website.
Template
The file that the theme uses to describe either a full page or a section of a page, such as a header, sidebar, or footer.
Theme
The design and layout of your website are altered by a WordPress theme. Changing your theme changes how the front-end of your website looks, i.e. what a visitor sees when they browse your website. In the WordPress Theme Directory, there are thousands of free WordPress themes, although custom (paid) themes are used by many WordPress sites.
Toolbar
The horizontal (black) bar that appears at the top of a logged-in user’s WordPress site and contains a number of useful links that take you to the back-end of the website.
URL
The term URL (or ‘uniform resource locator’) refers to the web address of a specific location on the internet, which is displayed within the browser’s address bar in most cases.
Visual Editor
The default editor that is used when creating new WordPress content.
Widgets
A self-contained area of a WordPress web page that performs a specific function, such as displaying a calendar or a list of recent posts, (typically within either the sidebar or footer). Thousands of new WordPress widgets, many of which can be added via plugins, have been created by the WordPress community.