Glossary

From CommunityGroveWiki

Article (Joomla!)

Discrete piece of content within the Joomla! hierarchy, which may be associated with a particular Section/Category combination or may be a Static Content Item; usually displayed in the main body of your page. Within the Content hierarchy, Section is the top level and is a container for Categories. Category is the next level and is a container for the third level, Articles. See also: Content Item.

Back-end or Administrator Backend)(Joomla!)

Administrator’s Control Panel, where site Managers, Administrators log in to manage all aspects of their web site, including both features and content. See also: Front-end (Site Front-end).

Banners (Joomla!)

A Joomla! core Component, which allows you to manage and display banner ads for your web site. In the Administrator (Back-end), you can set up banners, input and associate clients with their specific banners, and specify impressions as a number or unlimited. The number of impressions seen and clicks are recorded and displayed in the Back-end under Components/Banners/Manage Banners. Banners are displayed on the Site (Front-end) using the banners module.

Browser

A Software program used to view and interact with various types of Internet resources available on the World Wide Web. FireFox, Internet Explorer, and Safari are three common examples.

Category (Joomla!)

Collection of related Content Items; for instance, the Category Airplanes may contain the Content Items Biplanes, Fixed wing, and Jets. Within the Content hierarchy, Section is the top level and is a container for Categories. Category is the next level and is a container for the third level, Articles. See also: Article and Section. Category Name: The long name to be displayed in headings, e.g. Contact Our Corporate Headquarters in Virginia. Category Title: The short name to appear in menus, e.g. Contact Us Check Out (an item): When a user edits a file, they check it out. This prevents other users from being able to edit the item at the same time, thus preventing loss of data upon saving.

Check-in (Joomla!)

This function, available from the Site (Front-end) for Registered users with editing privileges, allows a user to make the items they were working on, previously locked and un-editable, available again. See also: Global Check-in Content Item: A Content Item is an item within the Section, Category hierarchy. See also: Static Content Item

Front-end (Joomla!)

Web site that is seen by your visitors (or Registered users. See also: Back-end (Administrator Back-end).

Global Check-in (Joomla!)

When an item is checked out and it is not saved or cancelled correctly (such as with a connection error or the use of “back” on the browser), it will remain checked out, and thus un-editable for all other users. Performing a Global Checkin will make those items available again. This option is only available in the Administrator (Back-end) or as a User Menu item for logged-in users. Group: Collection of user levels, classified as either Site (Front-end) or Administrator (Back-end). See also: Administrator

HTML

Short for Hyper Text Markup Language, the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web. See also: JavaScript, PHP

Image tag

In HTML, images are defined with the <img> tag. See also: Alt attribute.

Intro Text (Joomla!)

Required field that must contain content when creating a new Content Item or editing an existing Content Item. If text has been added to the Main Text field and the Content Item is checked to Show on Front Page, a Read More link will be shown, pointing to the full Content Item. Intro Text and Main Text are used in Content Items in the Section/Category hierarchy but not in Static Content Items. See also: Main Text

JavaScript

A common computer programming language developed by ECMA for use in web pages. JavaScript is relatively small and fast and is used for providing interactivity on web pages. See also: HTML, PHP Joomla!: Joomla! is one of the finest Open Source Web Content Management Systems available.

Main Text (Joomla!)

When creating or editing a Content Item, the Main Text box contains the text you do not want to show on the Front Page. It shows up after clicking the 'Read On' link in the Front-end of your site. See also: Intro Text

Media Files (Joomla!)

Media (Image) files such as .gif, .jpg, .png or .bmp files can be used in Content Items. Media files can be included in Content Items via Image Tab on Edit Content Item pages.

GNU/GPL

"GPL" stands for "General Public License". The most widespread such license is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This can be further shortened to "GPL," when it is understood that the GNU GPL is the one intended.

MediaWiki

A free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scaleable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database.

Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.

When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the file system. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.

Polls (Joomla!)

A core Joomla! component that allows a poll to be displayed on your Joomla! Web site. You can define the Poll title, the time delay in seconds (Lag) between votes, up to 12 vote options and on which page(s) it should be displayed.

Preview

The Preview button launches a new browser window to display what the Content Item will look like when published.

Publish(ed)

This defines the state of various parts of your content, category or sections. For example, any content, category or section will only display on your web site if they are published. Content Items can be managed with a start and end date of publishing. See also: Unpublish(ed)

Section (Joomla!)

A Section is a collection of Categories that are related in some way. It is part of the Section/Category/Content Item hierarchy. A section might be called 'Transport', categories in this section might be 'Boats', 'Cars’, and 'Airplanes'. See also: Category.

Site

The site is the Web site displayed to your visitors or users.

Site Templates (Joomla!)

Site Templates define the layout of your Joomla! Web sites Front-end.

Title

A name given to a content item.

Unpublish(ed) (Joomla!)

State of various content, category or sections, indicating whether any particular piece is visible on the site or operational (very much like an on-off switch). For example, content, categories or sections will not be displayed on your web site if they are unpublished. Content Items can be managed with a start and end date of publishing. See also: Publish(ed).

Web Links (Joomla!)

Core Joomla component that manages and displays hyperlinks to other web sites, organized into categories.

Wiki

A wiki is software that allows registered users or anyone to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis. Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".

"Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian word for "fast". It has been suggested that "wiki" means, "What I Know Is." However, this is a backronym.

WYSIWYG Editor

WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get" often used to describe Web editing tools to enable visual editing in a non-code view. Such tools are easy to use for those familiar with typical desktop applications, such as MS Word.