Absolute Path
An absolute path or full path is a unique location of a file or directory name within a computer or filesystem, and usually starts with the root directory or drive letter. Directories and subdirectories listed in a path are usually separated by a slash /.
Example: /Users/Matt/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg
To find the absolute path of a page, copy the text below into a new text file, save the file as path.php. Then open it in a Web browser (for example, http://www.example.com/images/path.php).
Absolute URI
A full URI.
http://www.example.com/blog/images/icecream.jpg
ftp://ftp.example.com/users/h/harriet/www/
Apache
Apache is short for Apache HTTP Server Project, a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available open source HTTP Web Server software produced by the Apache Software Foundation. It is the most commonly used web server on the internet, and is available on many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X. Apache serves as a great foundation for publishing WordPress-powered sites.
Array
An array is one of the basic data structures used in computer programming. An array contains a list (or vector) of items such as numeric or string values. Arrays allow programmers to randomly access data. Data can be stored in either one-dimensional or multi-dimensional arrays.
A one-dimension array seven (7) elements would be:
The Template Tag wp_list_categories() uses a one-dimensional array for the ‘exclude’ parameter.
An example of two-dimensional array, 7 by 3 elements in size, would be:
| 105 |
200 |
54 |
53 |
102 |
13 |
405
|
| 15 |
210 |
14 |
513 |
2 |
2313 |
4512
|
| 501 |
500 |
499 |
488 |
552 |
75 |
1952
|
ASCII
ASCII is short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Pronounced as “ask ee”, it is a standard set of codes used to represent numbers, letters, symbols, and punctuation marks.
Atom
A format for syndicating content on news-like sites, viewable by Atom-aware programs called news readers or aggregators.
Avatar
An avatar is a graphic image or picture that represents a user.
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Binaries
Binaries refer to compiled computer programs, or executables. Many open source projects, which can be re-compiled from source code, offer pre-compiled binaries for the most popular platforms and operating systems.
Blog
A blog, or weblog, is an online journal, diary, or serial published by a person or group of people.
Blogs are typically used by individuals or peer groups, but are occasionally used by companies or organizations as well. In the corporate arena, the only adopters of the blog format so far have tended to be design firms, web media companies, and other “bleeding edge” tech firms.
Blogs often contain public as well as private content. Depending on the functionality of the CMS software that is used, some authors may restrict access — through the use of accounts or passwords — to content that is too personal to be published publicly.
Blogging
Blogging is the act of writing in one’s blog. To blog something is to write about something in one’s blog. This sometimes involves linking to something the author finds interesting on the internet.
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is the subset of internet web sites which are, or relate to, blogs.
Blogroll
A blogroll is a list of links to various blogs or news sites. Often a blogroll is “rolled” by a service which tracks updates (using feeds) to each site in the list, and provides the list in a form which aggregates update information.
Bookmarklet
A bookmarklet (or favelet) is a “faux” bookmark containing scripting code, usually written in JavaScript, that allows the user to perform a function.
Boolean
A variable or expression which evaluates to either true or false.
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Category
Each post in WordPress is filed under a category. Thoughtful categorization allows posts to be grouped with others of similar content and aids in the navigation of a site. Please note, the post category should not be confused with the Link Categories used to classify and manage Links.
Capabilities
Term related to User authentication and access control. It is an adoption of permissions in RBAC. There are about thirty capabilities in WordPress. See Roles and Capabilities for a Description of the concept and a List of Capabilites.
CGI
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a specification for server-side communication scripts designed to transfer information between a Web server and a web-client (browser). Typically, HTML pages that collect data via forms use CGI programming to process the form data once the client submits it.
Character Entity
A character entity is a method used to display special characters normally reserved for use in HTML. For example, the less than (<) and greater than (>) are used as part the HTML tag structure, so both symbols are reserved for that use. But, if you need to display those symbols on your site, you can use character entities. For example:
- use
< for the less than (<) symbol
- use
> for the greater than (>) symbol
Character Set
A character set is a collection of symbols (letters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters), when used together, represent meaningful words in a language. Computers use an encoding scheme so members of a character set are stored with a numeric value (e.g. 0=A, 1=B, 2=C, 3=D). In addition, a collation determines the order (i.e alphabetic) to use when sorting the character set.
By default, WordPress uses the Unicode UTF-8 (utf8) character set for the WordPress MySQL database tables created during the installation process. Beginning with Version 2.2, the database character set (and collation) is defined in the wp-config.php file. Also note, the character set used for syndication feeds is set in the Administration > Settings > Reading panel.
chmod
chmod is a Unix/Linux shell command used to change permissions on files. Its name is a contraction of “change mode.”
Class
Classes are groupings of CSS styles which can be applied to any HTML element.
For classes in PHP, see the Class (Computing) article at Wikipedia and PHP Manual: Classes and Objects.
Collation
Collation refers to the order used to sort the letters, numbers, and symbols of a given character set. For example, because WordPress, by default, uses the UTF-8 (utf8) character set, and when the WordPress MySQL database tables are created during the installation process, MySQL assigns utf8_general_ci collation to those table. Beginning with Version 2.2, the collation (and character set) used by WordPress is defined in the wp-config.php file.
Comments
Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to posts. Typically readers simply provide their own thoughts regarding the content of the post, but users may also provide links to other resources, generate discussion, or simply compliment the author for a well-written post.
You can control and regulate comments by filters for language and content. Comments can be queued for approval before they are visible on the web site. This is useful in dealing with comment spam.
Content
Content consists of text, images, or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a web site, which provides a framework into which the content is inserted, and the presentation of a site, which involves graphic design. A Content Management System changes and updates content, rather than the structural or graphic design of a web site.
Content Management System
A Content Management System, or CMS, is software for facilitating the maintenance of content, but not design, on a web site. A blogging tool is an example of a Content Management System.
cPanel
cPanel is a popular web-based administration tool that many hosting providers provide to allow users to configure their own accounts using an easy-to-use interface.
CSS
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a W3C open standards programming language for specifying how a web page is presented. It allows web site designers to create formatting and layout for a web site independently of its content.
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Database
A database in computing terms is software used to manage information in an organized fashion. WordPress uses the MySQL relational database management system for storing and retrieving the content of your blog, such as posts, comments, and so on.
Default theme
Every installation of WordPress has a default theme. The default theme is sometimes called the fallback theme, because if the active theme is for some reason lost or deleted, WordPress will fallback to using the default theme.
Up to Version 2.9.2 the default theme was the WordPress Default theme (sometimes call Kubrick) and was housed in the wp-content/themes/default folder. Starting with Version 3.0, the Twenty Ten theme became the default (and fallback) theme.
Deprecated
Deprecated functions or template tags are no longer supported, and will soon be obsolete.
Developer
A developer, or dev, is a computer programmer who is active in creating, modifying, and updating a software product.
DIV
A DIV element in HTML marks a section of text. DIVs are used extensively in WordPress to apply CSS stylings to particular blog elements.
DOM
DOM (Document Object Model) is a standard, platform-independent interface that allows programmers to dynamically access HTML and XML to control the content and structure of documents. DOM connects programming scripts to web pages.
Draft
The draft post status is for WordPress posts which are saved, but as yet unpublished. A draft post can only be edited through the Administration Panel, Write Post SubPanel by users of equal or greater User Level than the post’s author.
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Excerpt
An excerpt is a condensed description of your blog post and refers to the summary entered in the Excerpt field of the Administration > Posts > Add New SubPanel. The excerpt is used to describe your post in RSS feeds and is typically used in displaying search results. The excerpt is sometimes used in displaying the Archives and Category views of your posts. Use the Template Tag the_excerpt() to display the contents of this field. Note that if you do not enter information into the Excerpt field when writing a post, and you use the_excerpt() in your theme template files, WordPress will automatically display the first 55 words of the post‘s content.
An excerpt should not be confused with the teaser, which refers to words before the
