WordPress Glossary.

Ever wonder what WordPress-related terms mean? Here are explanations of common jargon.

The process of designing, building and optimising websites seems to have its own special language – hence our WordPress Glossary to help you make sense of it all!

We’ve put together this WordPress glossary to explain as many of the terms that you’ll hear when talking to WordPress agencies. This A-Z contains descriptions of many of the common terms agencies use when developing WordPress sites.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

A record

An A record is one of the most basic DNS records. This takes your domain (yoursite.com) or subdomain (www.yoursite.com) and points it at an IP address (usually your server’s IP address).

There can be many different A records. For example, foo.yoursite.com could point to one server, and bar.yoursite.com could point to a completely different server.

Admin Area

This is the section of your website where you administer your post and page content.

It’s often referred to as ‘wp-admin’ and is basically the control centre for your entire website.

Admin Bar

The black bar that sits at the top of your WordPress site when you’re logged in. This bar contains links to various admin sections and plugin functionality.

This function can be switched off in the user’s settings.

If you don’t see the black admin bar on your site, it could either be switched off, or often, this could be caused by Javascript errors or plugin conflicts.

Administrator

This is the highest WordPress user role. Administrators have access to every section of your CMS – from pages and posts to actual theme files.

Administration Screens

CMS pages and sections where you administer parts of your website.

WordPress separates out content into Posts, Pages, Menus and widgets (as well as some others).

Absolute Path

The path (URL) to a page or file.

http://www.yourdomain.com/your-file-name.jpg

is an absolute path whereas

/your-file-name.jpg

is a relative path.

Advanced Custom Fields

It is an awesome WordPress plugin that we use on all the sites we design and build.

This plugin is a favourite of many WordPress agencies as allows better management of your site’s content.

Ajax

Short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Ajax allows your WordPress site to load content dynamically without refreshing the page, often used for forms, comments, or loading posts.

Anchor

This is the term used to describe a link to another page. An anchor can link to an internal or external page in the same browser tab or in a new tab.

Anchor text

This is the text that’s hyperlinked. This anchor text is very important for search engine optimisation.

Attachment

Similar to attachments in email, a WordPress attachment refers to an image or file that is uploaded to a post or page editing screen.

The file you upload when editing the post or page becomes ‘attached’ to that page.

Author

In WordPress, both pages and posts have ‘authors’. These are the people that have access to your site. Not all websites use authors on the front end, but it can be handy if you’ve several people writing content for your blog.

Autosave

WordPress automatically saves your posts and pages as you write them, just in case you lose connection as you work.

B

Back-end

The admin section of your website (see also front-end)

Backlink

A link back to your website from another external website. If the site linking to you is a good site, this is a positive thing. If the site linking to you is spammy, low-quality, it can have negative effects.

Backlinking is important in Search Engine Optimisation.

Bad Neighbours

This term is used to refer to other sites that share the same server as you do that use more server resources than they should. This results in the entire server (and every site on it) running slowly or encountering problems.

Bad neighbours are one reason to avoid cheap shared hosting accounts where one server can host 1000s of websites.

Bespoke WordPress theme

In our terms, this theme has been built 100% for purpose. We create bespoke WordPress themes for brands, starting with zero code: everything about the site is built for the brand.

C

Cookies

Your site stores These small files on visitors’ computers to store information.

In light of the GDPR, we recommend that WordPress site owners conduct an audit to see just what cookies their site sets. You’ll need to have a page on your site explaining what you set and why to your visitors.

Comments

Comments hail back to WordPress’ roots as a blogging platform. When you create a post on your site, visitors can comment on what you’ve written.

These comments can be held for moderation before they are published on your site.

Comments tend to attract many spam bots, so we advise using this functionality carefully.

Content Management System (CMS)

WordPress is a CMS. Content management systems pretty much do as the name suggests; they allow you to manage the content of your site.

WordPress is the most popular CMS on the planet, with over 30% of sites on the internet (at the time of writing) using WordPress as their CMS.

WordPress is also open source, so it makes a great platform for WordPress agencies to develop.

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

CSS is the ‘code’ that makes your site look how it looks. It is basically the ‘style’ of your site. CSS should be optimised to use as little code as possible to make your site load quickly. Poorly written CSS will inform the search engines that the build quality of your site is sub-par, which can, in turn, affect your rankings.

Custom Theme

This is a WordPress theme that has been created specifically for you and your website. It will have been created from a starter theme to do exactly what you need it to do. We build both custom and bespoke WordPress sites as they are quicker, easier to use and develop for future requirements.

Custom Fields

Custom fields extend the content section of WordPress posts and pages by allowing you to add extra sections to the editing screen of posts and pages.

They do tend to be a bit clunky when used alone, which is why we use the awesome Advanced Custom Fields plugin on all our sites.

Contributor

This is a user role within WordPress. A contributor is a basic role that allows the user to log into the site and add content. This role does not allow the user to publish or alter anything other than their own content.

Child Theme

If you use an off-the-shelf theme and need to customise it, creating a child theme is crucial. Child themes are clones of the main site theme, and you can edit template files (code) in them.

When your main theme is updated, nothing in the child theme is changed, so you don’t overwrite customisations to your site.

While child themes are great for free or paid themes, we prefer to create bespoke themes that don’t require a child element. This makes things simpler, quicker, and, in most cases, more cost-effective.

Many off-the-shelf themes can be hugely complicated, so unless you are experienced in coding, be careful when using child themes.

D

Database

Your database holds all the information you add to your site (except files). When you add new content, pages, posts, plugins and other content, the text content and settings for these elements are stored in the site’s database.

WordPress databases can grow quite large over time, so it’s important to optimise them every so often to avoid slowing down your site.

Default Theme

When you install WordPress, it ships with its own theme. This is WordPress’s theme, and they update it each year.

Whilst this theme is great, it’s not often used to customise sites.

DNS

Stands for Domain Name System. This is how your domain name is converted into an IP address for your site. When someone enters your domain name into their browser, the DNS converts this into the IP address of the server that your website sits on.

Dedicated Hosting

This is a hosting account on a server that hosts your site and no one else’s. Dedicated hosting is more expensive to buy and look after, but it means that your site will not suffer from bad neighbours.

Domain Name

DNS is the domain name of your website and part of your email addresses. It converts your domain name into a range of IP addresses that can point to your web server or mail server, for example.

E

Editor

There are several editors in the WordPress world, but this term most often refers to the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.

WordPress also has other built-in editors for editing theme and plugin files, but these are generally used only by WordPress developers.

Excerpt

The excerpt is an integral part of a post that’s often overlooked. When you have a list of posts (an archive), WordPress will generally truncate the first X words in the editor to create the excerpt; however, each post has the option to write your own post excerpt – this allows better content writing and is good for SEO.

F

File size

The size of an image, Javascript or CSS file in bytes. For example 343k.

In all things web, it’s important to keep file sizes as small as possible. For example, when uploading images to your website, they should first be sized down to the correct dimensions, optimised and compressed to reduce their file size.

The smaller the size of all the files on your website, the quicker it will load.

You’ll often hear developers tell you ‘that file size is too big’.

functions.php

This is an important WordPress template file that controls many functions on your website. Errors in the functions.php file often result in the WSOD, so it should only be modified by developers.

FTP

File transfer protocol. A method of transferring files directly to the server. WordPress developers will often ask for your FTP details if they need to modify files that the editor can’t reach or if they plan on moving your site.

Featured Image

Every post (or page if enabled) in WordPress can add a featured image. This image can then be used on the front end of the site. This is often used when displaying a list of news or blog posts on an archive page.

Footer

The bottom of your website is where you’ll have links and other contact information. The footer is also an HTML5 tag used for semantic markup.

Front-end

This is what developers call the public-facing site of your website. See also the back-end.

G

Gutenberg

The relatively new WordPress editor now forms the standard editing experience in WordPress.

Google Search Console

A tool that is linked to your site and provides information on data about the health of your site, backlinks, search queries and more useful information.

You can also use the search console to submit a sitemap to Google for indexing.

H

Header

The top-most part of your webpage. The information displayed in your header is often consistent across your entire site. It’s also an HTML5 tag for semantic markup.

Headless WordPress

A way of using WordPress where the back-end (content management) is separate from the front-end (display). In a headless setup, WordPress is used as a CMS to manage content, while the front-end is built using modern JavaScript frameworks like React or Vue.js. The connection between the two is typically made using the WordPress REST API or GraphQL.

Homepage

The main page of your website. Most of the traffic your site gets will land here first. This makes your homepage very important.

Hosting

Your hosting is where your website lives. There are 1000s of hosting companies offering services from a few pence a week to 100s of pounds a month.

With hosting, you generally get what you pay for.

The cheaper your hosting package, the lower its performance will be.

If you want your website to perform well, we recommend spending at least £30-£50 per month on your hosting.

.htaccess

A small text file that sits in the root of your server and controls certain aspects of your website (such as 301 redirects).

I

iFrame

An iFrame is basically a ‘window’ in your website where other HTML or files can be loaded. iFrames are used for YouTube embeds and displaying other HTML and code. There are better ways to do this sort of thing than using iFrames, but they are common.

IP Address

An IP address is basically the numerical version of your domain name. Using DNS and A records, your domain name is ‘converted’ into an IP, which is where your website lives.

J

jQuery

This is a Javascript library that allows developers to use pre-built JS functions to make stuff happen in your visitor’s browser (and a whole host of other complicated stuff).

JavaScript

Javascript is an object-orientated programming language that is commonly used to create interactive effects and elements within web browsers.

K

Kernel

The core part of an operating system is managing system resources. In the WordPress ecosystem, this term might occasionally come up when dealing with server-level issues.

L

localhost

A computer networking term. Localhost means this computer. When you connect your WordPress site to a database, the location of this database is often localhost – it means it is on the same computer as the site.

Loop

The loop is the core of WordPress. It displays the content from your database on the front end of your site. The WordPress loop is a query that can be modified in lots of different ways. For example, (in English) we can ask it to:

Show me the five most recent blog posts
Show me ten blog posts from the category ‘News.’
Display two blog posts with their excerpts and featured images, and then show five more blog titles underneath
Show me all the blog posts for the category ‘blog’ and display them as a list

The loop is incredibly powerful and flexible and is used all over your website.

M

Media

This term usually means anything that you’ve uploaded to your WordPress site. Images, videos, and PDFs are all referred to as media and are accessed via WordPress’s media library.

Media Settings

Within WordPress, you can control the settings for many different media types, but the main one is image sizes. When you upload an image to WordPress, it can be configured to automatically generate various sizes of that image for use on the site’s front end.

Memory Usage

Your site sits on a server (computer). The more complicated your site is, the more memory it needs to do things and process tasks. WordPress has a built-in function to request a certain amount of memory allocation from your server to operate the site.

One thing that always slows down WordPress sites is when the site needs more memory than it’s been allocated.

This is often a sign that something isn’t right on your installation.

Also, remember that the cheaper your hosting package, the less memory usage WordPress will have.

Menus

WordPress has a built-in system for managing site menus. You can create (navigation) menus for your site and have them displayed on the front end via hard-coding or widget use. One of the great things about WordPress is the ability for site owners to manage their own menus without the need for developers to get involved.

Multisite

We could write an entire essay about this, but multisite is a different way of using WordPress. It allows you to run many different WordPress sites from one install.

MySQL

Your website’s database. MySQL is an open-source database that’s nearly always used for WordPress (unless you’re trying to install WP on Windows, which we’re not really sure why you would, but people do so for some strange reason).

N

Nameservers

Nameservers are part of the domain name system. Your nameservers are often controlled by the company you bought your domain from, but it’s also possible to have them controlled by another third party. Changing your nameserver should not be done lightly, as any changes can take 24 hours or more to resolve, and errors can take down your site.

Your nameservers store your DNS settings, controlling where your domain points.

O

Object Caching

A method to store database query results to improve your WordPress site’s performance. Object caching plugins like Redis or Memcached are often used for this purpose.

Open Source

Open source software is code anyone can inspect, modify and enhance. For most WordPress users, this also means free.

Like many WordPress companies, we modify the WordPress source code to suit the needs of our clients’ websites.

Unlike many WordPress developers, we also maintain the open-source ethos regarding the sites we build—once our bills are paid, the site, code, and all sources are yours.

P

Page

This is a page on your WordPress site. Pages are usually used for top-level content such as ‘who we are’, ‘what we do’, and ‘contact us’. In WordPress, pages display their content according to the template they use.

Parent Theme

See child themes.

Performance

We talk about performance, or more accurately site performance a lot. Going through all the hassle and expense of building a new WordPress site and not ensuring it performs well can make the whole project a waste of time.

There are several types of ‘performance’ to consider:

Is your site fast, and does it load quickly – these are performance issues relating to technical factors
Does your site maintain and improve positions in the search results – these are SEO-related performance issues
Once you have a visitor, does this result in a sale of enquiry – these are conversion performance concerns

So the answer to how well your site is performing depends on the type of question you ask.

We run objective site audits (there’s a free option) – if you’d like us to test your site – get a free site audit.

Permalinks

Permalinks are fundamental to WordPress. Your permalink structure is how your site’s URLs are organised. These need to be planned carefully and not changed often, as Google indexes the permalink structure.

A permalink is simply a URL:

http://www.yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com/your-category-name
http://www.yoursite.com/your-category-name/your-blog-post-title

PHP

This is the script language used on your WordPress site. PHP is also open source.

Pingback

This is a function built into WordPress where your install tries to alert you about links from other WordPress sites that go back to your site. Since backlinks (good backlinks) are essential, this is a pretty handy feature.

Plugins

Plugins are third-party ‘apps’ that extend the functionality of your WordPress site. They should be used sparingly, as each one increases your site’s load time. There are both free and premium (paid-for) plugins.

Great care should be taken when installing plugins on WordPress. You should always ensure they are compatible with the version of WordPress you are using.

Plugin developers often fall behind in keeping their plugins up-to-date, which is one of the most common reasons WordPress sites get hacked.

Plugin Editor

The plugin editor is an admin section that allows you to edit plugins’ source code. It is not recommended for use on live sites.

Post Formats

Just like pages have templates, a post can also be set to display certain types of content, such as a gallery or list of links. On the sites we build, we favour custom post types over post formats as they are easier for administrators to control and manage.

Post Types

These are the different types of content that WordPress can hold. The main ones are post, page, attachment, and revision.

Post Slug

This is part of the URL that follows the last slash (/) in your domain name – it forms part of the permalink and is editable inside the CMS:

http://www.yoursite.com/this-is-your-post-title
http://www.yoursite.com/this-is-another-post-slug

Post Status

When you add a post to WordPress, you don’t have to publish it immediately. Its status can be set to a range of options such as draft and pending, so you or other people managing the content can organise posts for publishing.

Q

Query

A PHP function that does stuff such as (in English), ‘get me all the posts from December’ or ‘display ten posts here with their featured images.

Queries make WordPress work, but the more you have on a page, the longer it takes to load and the more server resources it takes up. Queries using anything to be randomly generated should be avoided.

R

Robots.txt

A small text file that sits on your server and controls access to search engine bots.

Redirects (301)

A 301 redirect tells search engines that content has been moved permanently. Use it with caution and consideration, as it can have a huge effect on your placement in the search.

If you are moving your site to WordPress from an old CMS or hand-coded version, 301 redirects will help ensure you maintain rank, as your old URL structure may not work in WordPress.

Responsive Theme

A theme that adapts the look and design of your website to the device on which it is being viewed. Google penalises non-responsive sites.

Revisions

WordPress stores your revision in the database when you edit a post or page. These revisions can be restored, allowing you to ‘roll’ your page or post content back to previous versions.

RSS

This is defined as ‘really simple syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’ and is built into WordPress. In a nutshell, your site has an RSS feed that allows feedreaders to access your content for syndication.

REST API

WordPress’s REST API allows developers to interact with your site via external applications, making it a popular choice for custom integrations.

S

Server

Your server is the computer where your website is hosted (see Hosting). Depending on what you pay for your server, it can be just your site hosted on it, or you can share your server with 1000s of other sites.

My best tip is to don’t scrimp on your server and hosting. The less you pay, the harder it will be for your site to perform properly.

Subdomain

It’s not strictly part of a WordPress glossary, but it’s important.

A subdomain is the first part of your domain name preceding the first dot.

www.yourdomain.com – the www is the subdomain

A domain can have lots of subdomains pointing to other servers.

Slug

This is the last part of your URL and is important for Search Engine Optimisation.

www.yourdomain.com/this-is-the-slug

Slugs should contain keywords and be carefully thought out to improve your rankings in the search engines.

SSL

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is the standard security for creating an encrypted link between your website and the visitor. When you have an SSL certificate installed, your site will be on HTTPS, and the visitor will see a padlock on their browser informing them that you’ve added an extra layer of security to your site.

Google reportedly prefers sites on HTTPS.

Slider

Sliders in WordPress usually refer to banners at the top of the page that contain two or more areas of content that slide into view – either on a timed basis or when the visitor clicks a button.

They are very popular on most websites for showing important content to visitors.

Sidebar

Lots of sites have these. A sidebar is an area of content that usually sits to the left or right of your main text content. Sidebars generally display related content, lists of categories, or other items such as calls to action.

Subscriber

The lowest level of WordPress users. Visitors can join your site as subscribers to receive automatic emails when new content is published.

Spam

In WordPress terms, spam is unwanted comments. If you have comments enabled on your site and get lots of spammy ones, you can mark them as such.

Shared Hosting

See hosting.

Screen Options

You can use screen options when editing WordPress content to change how the editing screen is laid out.

SEO

Search engine optimisation needs no introduction, is simple to say, and is endlessly complex.

SEO is the process by which you try to optimise your WordPress content to rank in the search engines when users search for specific keywords or strings.

SEO is a never-ending process on your site; you’ll need to invest in professional tools to do it properly.

You should at least use the free Google Analytics and Search Console to gain some insight.

If you’re seriously considering improving your SEO, call us on 01295 266644 and speak to Dave or Charlotte.

Shortcodes

Shortcodes are a built-in WordPress function allowing you to call certain plugin functions directly into posts and pages.

T

Tag

Tags are part of how WordPress helps you organise content for visitors. Each post on your site can have a tag, but they should be used sparingly and must make sense to search engines.

If you add too many tags to your content, you might be penalised in the search results.

Tags with categories. They are often explained as follows:

If your category was baking, your tags might be ‘Muffins’, ‘Bread’ and ‘Cakes.

Think of tags as a way of subdividing your categories.

Taxonomy

The WordPress taxonomy consists of categories and tags. The taxonomy is used to organise your content.

Template

A template is a theme file used to control the design and layout of content on a website’s front end.

We design and build bespoke themes so our clients get all the templates they need designed specifically for their content.

Off-the-shelf themes have templates designed to try and do as many different things as possible.

Text Editor

This is the HTML version of the WYSIWYG editor. WordPress allows you to toggle between normal and HTML views.

Time to first byte

This refers to how quickly your server responds to a request. The quicker the TTFB, the better the server. This is one of many tests we use when auditing websites.

Theme

A WordPress theme is a collection of PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript files that control your site.

WordPress themes can either be elementary and quick or huge collections of files that try to enable you to manage every single aspect of your WordPress site.

There are both free and premium (paid-for) themes.

When choosing an off-the-shelf theme, care should be taken, as what might work for your site today may not in the future.

This is why we’re fans of bespoke WordPress themes.

Theme Editor

An admin area within the WordPress CMS where you can directly edit the theme’s files. Great care should be taken in this section, as you can cause problems with your site if you’re not experienced in editing HTML and PHP.

Theme Framework

These frameworks are incredibly complicated themes that enable non-technical users to edit their websites and control the layout and design.

Frameworks are designed to try and cover all the bases. They are great for smaller sites but can be problematic to customise if your site requires bespoke work.

Theme Options

Many off-the-shelf themes come with a huge array of options. This is where you can choose fonts, colours, and other settings.

Thumbnail Sizes

When you upload an image to WordPress, the thumbnail sizes control what WordPress does with it. In general, it will keep the original size but also create copies of the uploaded image in different sizes for use on different parts of your site.

Trash

Just like your Mac or PC, WordPress has a trash (called Bin) where deleted posts and pages are stored before they are permanently deleted.

U

Updates

These are crucial to keeping WordPress safe, secure and running properly. One of the best things about WordPress is the built-in update feature. It will tell you when the core software, themes or plugins must be updated to the newest versions.

Some people like to update their sites themselves; others have us do it via a support or maintenance contract.

User Role

WordPress has a range of user roles built into the CMS that control who can do what on the site.

Administrators have the most rights, followed by Editors, Contributors and Subscribers.

This gives you control over who can manage, edit and publish content.

V

Visual Editor

This is the visual version of the WYSIWYG editor. WordPress allows you to toggle between HTML and visual views.

W

WebP

An image format developed by Google that provides superior compression for web images. WordPress supports WebP natively as of version 5.8.

WordPress.com

This is the ‘other’ version of WordPress. It’s a stripped-down version of a self-hosted WordPress install designed for simple blogs.

Widgets

There is a section in the admin for Widgets. Widgets are used to give you more control over what content goes on certain sections of your site without the need for coding. This is another vital entry in our WordPress glossary.

They are highly flexible and can hold various content – from images to menus.

wp-config.php

This is a crucial file in the WordPress install. It controls many different settings for your WordPress site, most importantly, the details of how your site connects to its database.

WSOD

White screen of death. This is a common occurrence in WordPress, where PHP syntax errors take the site down, replacing it with a blank white screen.

Please don’t panic; it’s often simple to fix!

X

XML-RPC

A remote procedure call protocol is used in WordPress to interact with the site (e.g., publish posts remotely). While it’s often disabled for security reasons, it’s still a WordPress feature.

XAMPP

A popular local server software can be used to develop WordPress sites locally. It stands for “Cross-Platform, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.”

XPath

A query language for selecting nodes in XML documents is sometimes useful when dealing with WordPress XML exports or imports.

XML Sitemap

A critical feature for SEO in WordPress, where plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math generate XML sitemaps to help search engines crawl your site effectively.

X-Frame-Options

A security header is often configured in WordPress to prevent clickjacking by controlling whether a site can be embedded in an iframe.

XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)

A security vulnerability that WordPress developers must guard against when developing themes or plugins.

Y

Yith

A rather strangely named set of premium and free plugins for WooCommerce. We have a developer licence with these clever people and use their plugins on the WooCommerce sites we build.

Yoast SEO

One of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress, offering tools to optimise content, generate XML sitemaps, and manage meta titles and descriptions. Essential for improving search engine visibility.

YAML

Stands for “YAML Ain’t Markup Language.” It’s a data-serialization format often used in development environments and configuration files, including some WordPress workflows like Docker setups or CI/CD pipelines.

Z

Z-index

A bit of a strange one, but we needed something for Z. This controls the order of items in HTML. The higher the z-index, the nearer the top an item is.

So, for example, an item with a z-index of 10 sits above (on top of) an item with a z-index of 5.