Website Glossary

An anonymous user is a visitor to a website that is not currently logged in. On our sites, we typically refer to anonymous users as visitors.

Everything in a URL following the main section. For example, in the URL, http://example.org/node/123, the first argument is "node", and the second argument is "123". Some modules, most notably Views, allow the use of "wildcard" arguments that cause a particular view to display varied information depending on the context set by the arguments.

Once a visitor successfully logs into a Drupal website, they become an 'authenticated user.' From this point on they will have increased access to the site, and can view content that may be hidden from anonymous users. How much access they will have is determined by whatever roles and access permissions were assigned to them.

Blocks are small, self-contained units of information used to position additional snippets of content within various regions of a theme. For example, menus are typically placed in the Header, Left Column, Right Column, and Footer regions of a theme.

On a Drupal-based site, a book is a set of views that are tied together in an outline sequence. A Table of Contents is automatically created for Book content. Books are often used for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), etc.

Describes objects that can have hierarchical relationships, such as menu items, book pages, and taxonomy terms. A "child" item is sorted under its "parent" item.

A special type of content that lets users add comments to web content. Comments are not nodes, and are not stored in the node table.

A type of node that has specific attributes, such as unique fields and functions. Some typical examples of content types are, pages, events, forum items, blog entries, web links, and shopping cart items.

Cron (short for chronograph) is a UNIX utility that automatically executes commands or scripts (groups of commands) at specified time/date intervals. Web systems use 'cron jobs' to perform periodic tasks, such as sending email deleting obsolete content, triggering backups, etc.

CVS is a version control system used to coordinate and track individual changes to a code base. Version control helps avoid problems of multiple programmers overwriting each others work and allows for infinite rollbacks to earlier versions. SVN and Git are newer version control systems that are increasing in popularity.

Drupal is a rapid application development framework used for building feature-rich websites. It is released under the GNU GPL license which is designed to maximize your rights. More information is available at http://www.drupal.org

Drush is a command line interface (CLI) for managing Drupal installations. It can greatly increase a developer's speed and efficiency.

Fields are added to content types to provide users of the site the ability to enter specific types of data. For example, a date field might be used to start the start date of an event, while a text field might be used to store the location of the event.

Hooks enable any Drupal module to call functions within any other module. This feature contributes mightily to Drupal's high flexibility. On the other hand, the freedom of any module (or code snippet) to call any hook in any other module greatly contributes to the potential complexity of Drupal development.

Input filters are used to modify text before it is displayed. They can strip out specific HTML codes, scripts, and other undesirable elements from content before pages are displayed. They can also add formatting and other features to content. Filters do not actually alter the original text; they modify it at the moment it is displayed. For this reason they might be better thought of as output filters.

An input format is a collection of filters, arranged in a certain order, that define any pre-display processing that is done before text is displayed.

A log is a list of recorded events. Logs typically contain an ongoing record of site usage and performance data, and error notices.

Menus are lists or rows of selectable navigation links.

Modules are components that add additional sets of functions to a web site.

An individual content item on a Drupal website. Typically nodes contain the main content displayed in a web view. Additionally, multiple nodes can be listed in order, such as multiple blog entries, calendar events, newsletter articles, etc.

A parent item is an object with an hierarchical relationship to one or more children elements. Menus, book pages, and taxonomy terms often have parent-child relationships. A dropdown menu is an example of links with parent-child relationships. All the links in the dropdown menu are children of the main menu item

A path is the unique, last part of the URL for a specific view on a website. For instance, for a view whose full URL is http://example.com/node/123, the path is node/123.

Permissions control access to website content and functions. Site administrators can assign specific permissions to various roles, and then can assign roles to users. Drupal's permission system is very flexible and powerful, enabling very fine grained access control to all aspects of a site.

Regions are areas of a theme (or design) in which the site content is displayed. Typical regions include: Header, Footer, Content, Left sidebar, and Right sidebar. Each theme defines its own set of regions, and there is no real limit to the number of regions that can be defined. The main content for a view is usually displayed in the Content region, while various blocks are assigned to other regions.

A designation given to a user that has a set permission attached to like the permission to create content or change menus.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to syndicate frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

A default content type that is automatically created in a new Drupal installation. It is typically used for date-oriented content, such as news items.

A CSS file (or files) replacing the default CSS of a theme or theme engine.

Taxonomy is literally "the science of classification." A taxonomy system enables authorized users to categorize content using either editable tags or pre-defined terms. Taxonomy is a highly flexible system for classifying content.

The first few words or sentences of a content item, usually with a link to the complete node. Teasers are usually shown in longer lists of content, such as a blog. Authors can control how much of the full test of a content item should be included in its teaser.

In taxonomy, categories contain lists of terms. These terms are assigned to site content to create categories of information.

The presentation elements of your website. The theme includes the graphics, styles for text, and navigation for the website.

A theme engine is a set of scripts that interprets dynamically generated content and outputs it as HTML. Drupal comes with three standard theme engines. Additional theme engines can be written as needed.

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the unique address that defines location of an object on the Internet. Generally, the syntax for a URL contains the scheme, host-name, port, path, filename, and any optional arguments.

A person using a website. Users can be registered or anonymous. Users are assigned roles in order to allow specific users to participate with a site in different ways. On our sites, we typically refer to a user as visitor.

User 0 (zero) refers to all anonymous visitors. Such visitor are typically given the most restricted access to the site. For example, they are not able to access administrative functions. Once a user logs in, their session is associated with their unique user id.

The first user created in a new Drupal installation is automatically granted all access permissions. This user is referred to as the Site Maintenance Account in Drupal 7 and above.

A view is a unique view of a web page or object. Many still refer to views as pages, but that is rarely an accurate description of web content, and is becoming increasingly less so as new forms of content and display are created. In Drupal, the Views module can be used to create custom views of website content.

Weight is a term used by Drupal to define the relative priority of a function, or the relative position of a content item. Lighter weights (values less than zero) will float items toward the top of lists, while heavier weights (values greater than zero) will float items toward the bottom of lists. The default weight value is zero. Items with the same weight are sorted in alphabetical order.

WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get." It is used to describe editors that display content as closely as possible to the final result. For example, Adobe Dreamweaver has both a WYSIWYG view and a code view.