WordPress Terminology

Now that you have a good understanding of WordPress and some of its features, it’s time to familiarize yourself with some of the terminologies commonly used in the WordPress ecosystem.

You may have come across some of these terms before, depending on your experience level with WordPress and web development in general. However, if you’re new to this course and aim to become a proficient WordPress developer, we strongly recommend becoming comfortable with these terms. This will help you better grasp the official documentation, support articles, and communication with other WordPress developers. Here are some terms that will prove useful when discussing WordPress:

• Back-end: The back-end refers to the section of your website where you can log in and manage everything from your Dashboard.
• Codex: The official WordPress manual containing support articles, documentation, code snippets, and links to external resources.
• Content Management System: Software designed to manage the content on a website.
• cPanel: A web-based administration tool for managing your web hosting account.
• Database: Software used to store and manage data in an organized manner.
• Default Theme: The theme that comes pre-installed with a fresh WordPress installation. It also serves as a fallback theme if the current theme experiences issues.
• DNS: Refers to the Domain Name System, which maps domain names (like google.com) to their IP addresses.
• DOM: An interface that enables programmers to dynamically access HTML and XML on a web page.
• Domain Name: A system used to assign easy-to-remember names to website IP addresses.
• Footer Area: The horizontal section at the bottom of a website where widgets and copyright information are typically displayed.
• Front-end: The user-facing part of your website where visitors can view and interact with your content.
• Gravatar: A service that allows users to associate a global avatar (image or photo) with their email addresses.
• Header Image: A wide image that can be set to appear at the top of your website.
• Hosting Provider: A company that offers space on a web hosting server for a fee.
• IDE: An application that provides all the tools necessary for software development and testing.
• Menu: A collection of links to pages, categories, and social media profiles on your website, usually displayed in the navigation area.
• Meta: The meaning can vary in WordPress depending on its usage, but it’s typically used to refer to administrative data.
• Multisite: The ability to create a network of WordPress sites from a single WordPress installation.
• Navigation: A set of links on your website that assists site visitors in navigating through your content.
• Nonce: A one-time token generated by WordPress to protect your site against unexpected or duplicate requests, which could lead to permanent or unintended consequences.
• Permalink: A permanent link to content on your website, making it easy to share unique pages with others.
• Sidebar: A location on your website where you typically display elements like the search bar, recent and popular posts, and other important widgets. A website can have more than one sidebar.
• Toolbar: The small black bar just above your site that provides quick links to various parts of your website, usually visible only to logged-in users.
• XML-RPC: A remote procedure call (RPC) protocol that uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.

To further expand your knowledge of WordPress terminology, you can refer to the WordPress Glossary page and explore https://wpglossary.net/.