Wiki

A/B Testing (see Multivariate Testing) - A process by which more than one component of a Website may be tested in a live environment. Companies perform A/B testing to determine which versions of a piece of content will perform better. This can include which will generate more page views, or which will 'convert' the reader to an action.

A/B testing requires some analytics appliance to measure. Most products like Google Analytics, Omniture, and Nielsen Net Ratings have functionality that allow for A/B testing.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - A group of technologies that allows for the development of rich and efficient internet applications. AJAX enables data on a Web page to be changed (in response to user input or otherwise) without the browser agent having to reload the entire page. In most cases, JavaScript is used to request data (usually in XML format) from the Web server and dynamically display that content within the current document.

Apache HTTP Server - An open source Web server developed by the Apache Software Foundation available for most operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Apache is currently the most widely used Web server in the world.

Many modules are available to extend Apache's functionality to include programming languages, enhanced security, and various file system access. Microsoft's Internet Information Services is Apache HTTP Server's largest competitor.

Application Server - Framework that manages the complete processing and delivery of an application. Application Servers rely on server-side dynamic processing and database interactions. An Application server can manage database, Web server, and processing languages in one package. Some common application servers are .NET, J2EE, Ruby on Rails, and Apache integrated with PHP.

Berners-Lee, Tim - Tim Berners-Lee is the founder of the World Wide Web and the man we all owe a debt of gratitude to. Mr. Berners-Lee developed his concepts for the Web while working at CERN research facility in the late 1980's, which had thousands of transient scientists working on many projects over a large space. His concept was to link everyone's research and content through the use of standard communication protocols.

Mr. Berners-Lee invented the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), or rather, derived it from SGML. He also wrote the specification for the uniform resource identifier (URI), which is ostensibly the address of any content node anywhere. He also invented an early line-mode Web browser on a NeXT computer workstation, mainly to demonstrate his concepts to whomever would give him audience.

However, Mr. Berners-Lee greatest legacy is his breakthrough conception that he could link all human knowledge in digital form by leveraging Ted Nelson's notion of HyperText linking of content nodes across the entirety of the Internet framework, which was already in existence at the time.

 It was left to other more commercial-minded people like Marc Andreeson to create commercial-grade Web browsers that would exploit the power of the Web. Had Mr. Berners-Lee patented or licensed his inventions, he could very well have been the wealthiest man our civilization has ever known, but it is a testament to his greatness that he has -- to this date -- never directly profited commercially from the multi-trillion dollar platform that is the World Wide Web.

It is likely that hundreds of years from now, Mr. Berners-Lee will be remembered as the Johannes Gutenberg of digital publishing.

Bounce Rate - Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who arrive to any page on a Web site, then leave immediately from that site without going any deeper into the site.

Business Requirements Definition - A study done to define exactly what a company's business needs are for a given software implementation. The BRD report offers a prioritized list of problems to solve, and may additionally offer a high-level logical solution in the form of drawings and a narrative.

Business Rules - A set of codified restrictions on how data may be entered, edited, related, and represented within a data management system. Every company has its own distinct set of business rules. The degree of complexity in a data management implementation is proportional to the amount of effort placed in defining business rules.

CAPTCHA - CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a program that generates a graphic with a distorted string of alphanumeric characters that a human can type into a form field but a computer-generated program cannot read and interpret. This is a splendid and low/no cost way to test whether a contributor to a site is indeed human.

CAPTCHA does not ensure that the human is a nice person that will contribute in a positive way to the site, but it at least protects the site from automated programs built for malicious intentions.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - A stylesheet-based language used to style documents-most commonly xHTML and HTML. CSS is meant to separate content from presentation and to provide consistent styles throughout an entire application.

The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Adoption was slow at first, but CSS 2.1 has now been widely adopted by all modern Web browser applications.

CCD (Charge Coupled Device) - An electronic light sensor used in digital capture devices.

Change Management - Change Management is a best practice project management approach to implementing changes within an organization. Those changes could be staffing, workflow, technology, even material/premise changes.

Collaborative (collaboration) Software - A broad term describing software that allows some form of communication between users. Collaborative (collaboration) software generally falls into management (scheduling, project management, social networking), conferencing (IM, forums, shared document workflow), or communication (email, wikis, voice mail) tools.

Compiler - A program that processes statements written in a particular programming language and turns them into machine language or object code.

Content - Intellectual property with intrinsic value that is stored for reuse. Content can be of any type, including including unstructured text, structured data, images, video, and documents from any number of application programs.

Content can be broken out into different types. For instance, an article can be a content type as can a BLOG, a survey/poll, a gallery/slideshow, and so on.

Ideally all of these items are stored in a central repository and a search appliance is used to retrieve them.

Content Management System (CMS) - A software platform used to create, manage, and present intellectual property (content) across different publishing channels. These channels include but are not limited to Web/Internet, Print formats, and mobile devices.

Type of software programs that allow organizations to publish Website content more effectively are called Web Content Management Systems (WCMS).

Some companies build internal applications to manage catalog data for the purpose of publishing to Web, Print, etc. These systems are alternately called Catalog Management Systems and "Content Management Systems." while they have the charactistics of content management, the phrase catalog management is more descriptive and should be used. When that data is delivered to a Website for the purpose of selling products, the phrase "E-Commerce System" is more appropriate. 

Author's note: Acronyms are proliferating in the realm of technology, some driven by need, others by sales and marketing. DPCI recommends keeping it simple by using the term or keyphrase that is most specific to the objectives that the technology is meant to achieve.

Copyleft - A legal term that specifies that anyone who redistributes software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft is a critical characteristic of the GNU General Public License Agreement that much of the open source community has embraced.

Cross-Platform - An ambiguous term that indicates that an application is operable on more than one platform. This can include Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD among others. Most Web Applications are considered Cross-Platform because they are usable from browsers developed for each operating system.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) - An architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. The components of DITA include an architectural specification, a language specification, a set of DTDs and an equivalent set of schemas.

Database Publishing - The technology and practices used to import content (data) from a central source onto a print design template. Data sources include relational databases (Oracle, MS SQL, Access), XML files, tab delimited files, or mainframe. Print design templates include QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe FrameMaker.

Database publishing vendors such as MC Research (LinkUp) and EM Software (XData, mCatalog, etc) have presented these solutions for almost 15 years. In the past, database publishing was accomplished with plugins/extensions working with a desktop publishing product. More recently database publishing is being accomplished with server-side technologies working in concert with QuarkServer, InDesign Server, or proprietary technologies (PageFlex, for example). A newer synonym for this capability is called WebTop Publishing.