Technical Glossary

Server

The computer where the website and other information specific to the site is centrally stored.

Apache

The most common web server which can run PHP and MySQL (see below) among other languages.

HTML

Standing for HyperText Markup Language, HTML is the language in which virtually all websites are written in. Composed of predefined "Tags", such as <img> for an image, and raw text, it means that websites have their structure defined according to a standard template. It is actually a specific subcategory of XML (see below).

XML

Standing for eXtended Markup Language, it is in many ways a broader version of HTML in which the tags are mostly not predefined. It is broadly used to communicate structured information, although it is most common in its specific forms such as HTML (see above) and RSS ("Really Simple Syndication" - a basic language used commonly in internet news feeds).

PHP

Standing for PHP Hypertext Programming, PHP is a language for programming dynamic websites which runs on the server and is known therefore as a server-side language. It can only run before the website is displayed to the user and it is the most commonly used server-side language in the world.

JavaScript

A programming language used primarily in websites, JavaScript runs on the computer of the person viewing the website and is thus known as a "Client-side" language. It is a simplified and much altered version of Java, hence the name, and can perform dynamic tasks as the person is viewing the page, which PHP cannot do.

AJAX

Standing for Asyncronous JavaScript And XML, this is a method for JavaScript to communicate with the web server, thus allowing information to be stored on the server based on the user's interaction with a web page, and for dynamic information to be retrieved from the server as the user interacts with the page.

MySQL

Standing for My Structured Query Language, MySQL is a common, free to use, database management system. Information specific to the website can be easily stored, retrieved, sorted and searched by MySQL queries from languages such as PHP.

Flash

Made by Adobe, Flash is a client-side website language used primarily for adding graphical, audio and video capabilities to a web page.

CMS

Standing for Content Management System, this is described in its own page here.