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Definitions from the Sharpened Glossary
Safe Mode
Safe Mode is a way for the operating system to run with the minimum system files necessary.
SCSI
Stands for "Small Computer System Interface," and is pronounced "scuzzy." SCSI is a computer interface that can be used to attach devices like hard drives and scanners to your computer. You can connect up to seven devices to a SCSI interface and still get good performance from all of them. SCSI can support faster data transfer rates than the other popular storage interface, IDE.
SDRAM
Stands for "Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory." SDRAM is an improvement to standard DRAM in that it retrieves data alternately between two sets of memory. This eliminates the delay caused when one bank of addresses is shut down while another is prepared for reading. It's called "Synchronous" DRAM because the memory is synchronized with the clock speed that the computer's CPU bus speed is optimized for. The faster the bus speed, the faster the SDRAM can be. SDRAM speed is measured in Megahertz, which makes it easy to compare the the processor's bus speed to the speed of the memory.
Search Engine
A Web site that employs bots (spiders, robots, crawlers) to search the Web. Search engines take the information gathered by its robots and use it to create a searchable index of the Internet. There are many different web search engines that you can use to do a search. Some of the most popular ones are Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Excite.
SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. Process of improving the positioning of a Web page in search engines. Optimization may involve design/layout changes, new text for meta tags, headlines and Web page content.
SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Result Page.
Server
A computer which is used as the main source of interconnectivity for other computers. All files, text, scripts and images for a given site are kept on the site's server storage device (hard disk drive) and are downloaded on demand.
Skin
This strange term refers to the appearance of a program's interface. By changing the skin of a program, you can make the interface look completely different, but usually still have all the same functions. It is similar to a "Theme" you may use to customize the appearance of your computer's desktop.
Spam
Act of flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Spam also can be the act of using any words, HTML code, scripting, or programming on a web page that is not meant to benefit the end user. Spam got its name from a Monty Python Flying Circus sketch where a bunch of vikings kept repeating "Eggs, spam, spam, spam, bacon and spam."
Spider
A computer program that travels the Internet to locate web pages. It indexes the documents in a database, which is then searched using a search engine. Each search engine uses a spider to build its database.
Splash Page
An introductory page, implemented on some Web sites, that typically appears only temporarily before taking the user to the site's home page. Splash pages consist either of a large graphic image or a Flash animation, and a link instructing visitors to "Enter" a web site, or a redirect to a home page. Splash pages are widely considered annoying.
SQL
Stands for "Structured Query Language," and can be pronounced as either "sequel" or "S-Q-L." It is a query language used for accessing and modifying information in a database. Some common SQL commands include "insert," "update," and "delete." The language was first created by IBM in 1975 and was called SEQUEL for "Structured English Query Language." Since then, it has undergone a number of changes, with the a lot of influence from Oracle Corporation. Today, SQL is commonly used for Web database development and management. Though SQL is now considered to be a standard language, there are still a number of variations of it, such as mSQL and mySQL (which this Sharpened.net glossary uses). By using a scripting language like PHP, SQL commands can be executed when a Web page loads. This makes it possible to create dynamic Web pages that can display different information each time they load.
SSL
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a commonly-used protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data that's transferred over the SSL connection. Many web sites use the SSL protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By convention, web pages that require an SSL connection start with https:// instead of http://.
Stop Words
These are words that an indexing program doesn't index. Usually stop words include articles (a, an, the) and other common words that appear often.
Subdomain
Subdomain is a "domain within a domain". Subdomains are individual web addresses built upon a pre-existing domain name, for example, support.yourdomain.com. By definition, a subdomain should not have the prefix of "www".
With NumaTek hosting account, you can create an unlimited number of subdomains within your master domain.
Submission
The process of notifying search engines or directories about a website. Every search engine or directory has a form to enable the submission of websites, varying from a simple URL address (for a search engine), to more detailed information (for a directory). Submissions may be made manually or by using automated software, although the manual submission is more effective for search engine placement.
TCP/IP
Stands for "Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol." These two protocols were developed in the early days of the Internet by the U.S. military. The purpose was to allow computers to communicate over long distance networks. The TCP part has to do with the verifying delivery of the packets. The IP part refers to the moving of data packets between nodes. TCP/IP has since then become the foundation of the Internet. Therefore, TCP/IP software is built into all major operating systems, such as Unix, Windows, and the Mac OS.
Text Link
A word (or a string of words) in hypertext that is not accompanied by a graphical image. Connects one area of a web page with another area or with another web page.
Telnet
This is a program that allows you log in to a Unix computer via a text-based interface. If you have an account on a Telnet server, you can access certain resources on the system such your home directory, your e-mail account, FTP files, etc. The downside of Telnet is that, to use it, you need to use Unix commands, which can be a challenge.
Template
A template is a file that serves as a starting point for a new document. When you open a template, it is pre-formatted in some way. For example, you might use template in Microsoft Word that is formatted as a business letter. The template would likely have a space for your name and address in the upper left corner, an area for the recipient's address a little below that on the left site, an area for the message body below that, and a spot for your signature at the bottom.
Terabyte
As you might have guessed, this is a unit of measurement for computer data. A terabyte is 1024 gigabytes of data. And since a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, and a megabyte is 1024 bytes, a terabyte is a little more than one trillion bytes. If you want to be exact, a terabyte is 2^40, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. Either way, that's a lot of space. Though this term isn't used very much today, you'll probably be hearing it used more often in the future. That is, unless the computer industry starts to move backwards...
Title Tag
The name of a web page. The content of the Title tag is generally displayed by the browser at the top of the browser window. The search engines use the Title tag to provide a link to the sites which match the query made by the user. Having keywords in the Title tag of a page can significantly increase the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.
Traffic
Amount of information being transferred. Your computer that visits a web site and downloads any of its pages is causing "traffic" while information is being transferred between the web site and your computer. Traffic includes such things as e-mail, of course. The more traffic, the better. You can find out how much traffic your web site gets by viewing and analyzing the log files on your web server.
Trojan Horse
In Greek mythology, there is a story about the Trojan War. This war lasted many years, as the Greeks could not penetrate the heavily barricaded city of Troy. Currently Troy is the small town at Turkiye close to the city Istanbul. So one day, a few of the Greek soldiers brought the people of Troy a large wooden horse, which they accepted as a peace offering. The horse was moved inside the city walls, where it sat until the night. After the people of the city had fallen asleep, Greek soldiers jumped out of the wooden horse, opened the gates to let their fellow soldiers in, and took over the city. In the computing world Trojan horses are software programs that masquerade as regular programs, such as games, disk utilities, and even antivirus programs. But if they are run, these programs can do malicious things to your computer.
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