When you start blogging it’s tricky to get to grips with all the terminology! So, I thought I’d help by creating an A-Z of Blogging. I hope it helps!
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
A
- Akismet – WP spam filter plugin.
- Alexa – A worldwide scoring/ranking index for blogs.
- Adsense – A way to monetize your blog with google advertising.
- Avatar – Graphical representation of the author/user.
- Aweber – Paid for email subscription service.
- Above the fold – The screen which shows without scrolling down.
- Anchor Text – Clickable text in a hyperlink. For SEO best practices dictate that anchor text be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text.
- Alt Text – A description of the image in the image IMG tag.
- Affiliate Window – Advertising/monetization company.
- Archive – Store of past posts.
- Aperture – Photo editing programme on Mac.
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B
- Bit.ly – Shorten urls.
- Britmums – Leading parenting network.
- Backlink – Every time you comment on someone else’s site or they mention you, this leaves a backlink to your blog. More backlinks the better, especially from reputable, long-standing sites.
- Buffer – Tweet scheduler.
- Backend – The admin area for your blog.
- BlogFest – A blog conference organised by Mumsnet.
- Blogroll – A list of your favourite blogs displayed on your blog.
- Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors that leave your site after reading only one page.
- Bloglovin – Mechanism to make reading blogs you love easier.
- Blogtacular – A fabulous and creative blog conference held in June.
- Blog Hop – A type of linky when everyone shares the code and so they all display the linkee thumbnails.
- Boomerang – fabulous addition to Gmail, which lets you schedule emails.
- BluChic – Blog theme seller.
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C
- Canva – Online free (although has paid for elements) design facility.
- Comments – Everyone loves a comment. An important part of a blog and vital for interaction and building a community.
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) – A file written in CSS that controls the style of your site.
- Categories – How you choose to divide the topic of your blog up.
- Captcha – An antispam add on that asks people to complete a task before they can leave a comment.
- CPC (Cost per click) – Getting paid for a link depending on how many clicks the link receives from your site.
- CPM (Cost per mile) – Getting paid for an advert per 1000 views of it on your site.
- Creative Commons – Licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.
- Crawl ability – The ease with which search engines can crawl through your site.
- CMS (Content Management System) – A platform where you can post contents, i.e. WP, Blogger, Squarespace.
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D
- Death to the Stock Photo – A free photograph site.
- Domain Authority – How much authority and trust Google has in your site. The more trust/authority, the more like they are to show it to people.
- Drip campaign – Email subscription campaign, where different actions lead to different emails being sent.
- Dashboard – The admin area for your blog.
- Domain Name – The unique address of your blog i.e. https://www.youbabymemummy.com
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E
- Evergreen – WordPress plugin that tweets links to archived posts.
- Evernote – Organisation programme.
- Evergreen content – Posts that are timeless and will keep driving traffic to your site.
- Editorial Calendar – Either a spreadsheet, diary or the WP plugin. Mapping out your future content.
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F
- Flickr – Great place to source images.
- Featured image – The image that is selected to represent your blog post on the front screen of your blog and on social media.
- Footer – The bottom section of your blog screen.
- Feed – The stream of updates, either from your blog or on social media.
- Foodies100 – A food blog ranking, run by Tots100.
- Follow Link (‘Dofollow’) – A link that gives link juice and increases a company/blogs search results.
- Front End – The part of your site visible to the public.
- Favicon – The image displayed next to the site name in the browser tab.
- Faded – Photo editing app
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G
- Google analytics – Monitors the stats of your blog.
- Google + – Googles own social network.
- Gadget – The Blogger equivalent to a widget.
- Google Adsense – A way to place adverts on your blog and earn from them.
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H
- HIBs – Homes & Interior blogger index run by Tots100
- HTML – Standard markup language used to create web pages
- Hyperlink – A reference to data that the reader can directly follow either by clicking or by hovering
- Header – The top of your blog, usually the header image and menus.
- Host – The company that supports your blog and supports your data.
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I
- Instagram – Photo sharing social network. Part of the TOTS100 ranking system.
- Iconosquare – A great site that allows you to respond quickly to Instagram comments and look at stats.
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J
- Jetpack – A package of widgets that WP users can add to their site.
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K
- Klout – Measures your social influence across all your linked platforms.
- Kred – Similar to Klout, used to make up part of the Tots100 ranking, but has been replaced by Instagram.
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L
- LinkedIn – Social network for business.
- Linky – An online party. One blogger creates a link up (specific themed posts) and other bloggers write posts according to the link up details and link them to the hosts blog.
- Lightroom – Adobe photo editing software.
- Landing Page – A simple page that people land on when they first come to your website.
- Later – A website that enables you to schedule Instagram posts.
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M
- Mumsnet Bloggers Network – A leading blogging network, who also hold a conference each year.
- Media Kit – The vital stats and achievements of your blog, to send to potential partners.
- Mail Chimp – Makes it easy to send out newsletters.
- MorgueFile – More free photos
- Meta description – An HTML and XHTML element that describes your page to search engines.
- Meta keywords – Specific type of metatag that appear in the HTML code of a Web page which tell search engines the topic of the page.
- Meta Tags – Provide structured metadata about a Web page.
- Menu – A bar which displays your blogs main pages.
- Monetization – A process to make money from your blog.
- Moz Rank – Represents a link popularity score. It reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet.
- Mass Planner – A scheduler for all social networks. Also has some pretty cool features, like auto like on Instagram.
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N
- NetMums – An online network for mums.
- Navigation – See menu.
- Niche – The area which you blog in.
- NoFollow – A link that doesn’t give the linkee any search engine link juice. This should be used if you are being paid for the link.
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P
- Picmonkey – Online photo editing website.
- Pingback – A WP notification you receive if someone posts a link to one of your posts.
- Pinterest – Social network where curating is King.
- Plugins – Useful additions to a WordPress blog which make life so much easier in a wide range of aspects.
- Permalink – A link to a post which won’t change if the title changes.
- Page Rank – A ranking sytems which was used by Google to determine the popularity/trust of links on a blog and then assign the blog a rank. Not updated by Google anymore, so becoming increasingly less important.
- Podcast – Episodic digital media which can be subscribed to and downloaded.
- Page Authority – A score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engines.
- Plugin – Various extra software modules that you can add on to your WordPress blog to perform additional functions.
- Parent Theme – A WordPress child theme takes the functionality of another theme, named parent theme. It gives you the possibility to customize an existing theme. Instead of modifying the theme files directly, you can activate the child theme and work within it.
- Post Planner – A paid for service that allows you to source content for your social media accounts & schedule it.
- Priime – Mobile photo editing app
- Page views – The number of times your blog pages have been viewed.
- Pixelmator – Photo editing on Mac.
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R
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – a list of all your latest posts surrounded by code, to enable it to be shared across the web.
- RSS Reader – A way to read the RSS feeds of your favourite websites/blogs.
- Redirect – A way to direct people to a certain page on your blog after they land on another.
- Registrar – A company that provides registration for domain names.
- Responsive – A mobile responsive blog that responds to the size of screen it’s viewed on and changes accordingly.
- Retweet – When another person reshares your tweet to their followers.
- Rapportive (for Gmail) – An email addition that is free and gives you a box on the right-hand side showing the persons profile and social media networks.
S
- Skimlinks – Affiliate network that enable you to earn from the links you use in your posts.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – The process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic results.
- StumbleUpon – A social sharing platform, where you can add you content but also ‘stumble’ for the content of others.
- Sticky Post – A post that stays at the top of your blog regardless of when it was published and despite it not being the newest post.
- Self-Hosted – An alternative to the free WordPress blogs. You pay a company a small fee each month to support and store your blog online. Note if you wish to monetize your blog you cannot do this on the free WordPress blogs.
- Sidebar – The space at the side of your blog where you can add adverts, categories, anything you wish.
- Site map – File where you can list the web pages of your site to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content.
- Spam – electronic junk mail or comments.
- Social Oomph – Tweet schedulers, that allows you to set a schedule for each tweet and then forget about it!
- Slider – A section of your blog containing images that revolve.
- Slug – A part of a URL which identifies a particular page on a website in a form readable by users.
- Shortcode – Little bits of code in WordPress that allow you to do various tasks easily. Allows people to execute code inside WordPress posts, pages, and widgets without writing any code directly. So you can create objects or embed files with one single line of code.
- Shortlink – A condensed version of a url.
- Shareaholic – Plug in to manage your social sharing.
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T
- Tots100 – Parenting blogger network.
- Twitter client – various programmes that help you manage your Twitter feed.
- TweetDeck – Tweet Scheduler
- Tag – Used to tie WordPress posts together by topic or series.
- Tagline- The line under your header which explains your blog or aims to give context.
- Tag cloud – A block of tags that you use on your blog displayed in your sidebar.
- Traffic – How many visitors your blog has.
- Theme – The structure and layout of your blog. It is possible to find free themes, but if you want more flexibility, then it’s better to buy one.
- Template – In WordPress, a custom PHP template chosen from a drop-down in the Page Attributes area of the backend of a WordPress page to indicate whether it’s a landing page, blog page, etc. 2. In Blogger, the theme or appearance of the blog.
- Trackback – A type of linkback method for website authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Enables authors to keep track of who is linking to their articles.
- Twuffer – Tweet scheduler
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U
- Unsplash – Free photo website.
- Url (Uniform Resource Locator) – A reference (an address) to a resource on the Internet
- User – A person who visits your blog.
- Uniques – Unique users or visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site in a given period.
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V
- VSCO – Picture editing App.
- Vlog – Video blog.
- Visual Editor – A rich text editor in the WordPress post edit screen. The WordPress post edit screen has two editors, Visual and Text, with the Visual Editor being ‘what you see is what you get’.
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W
- Widget – A place to put code, images in your sidebar/footer.
- Whois – A site that allows you to lookup any generic domains and find out the registered domain owner.
- WordPress.com – A free blogging platform.
- WordPress.org – A paid for version of WordPress for people who host their own blogs.
X
- .XML Sitmap – A file you can use to publish lists of links from across your site. You can get plugins to help. This helps to improve Googles ability to crawl your site.
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Y
- Yoast – A WP Plugin that makes SEO easy.
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I know I missed a few letters out, but well, I’ll be honest my brain hurt trying to think of things. Have I mentioned something new for you? I hope this A to Z helps.
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Comments 42
Wow, this must have taken AGES to put together – what a fantastic resource. I’m sure there’s quite a few I’ve only worked out fairly recently myself, wish I’d had this to look at when I started blogging. And there’s some plugins and photo sites which are new to me too, so off to explore…
As an experienced blogger I did know a lot of these terms. Still there were certainly some that were new to me.
oh goodnness are we really that crazy to do and know all those! What a fab resource for others.
I love a good A-Z and yours is fantastic, I will be sharing this with friend who can’t quite get head around all the blogging lingo and I’m not an expert so this is extremely useful. 🙂 x
I first came across many of these on Blog Club Aby! I’m struggling with PlugIns and getting Evergreen to work personally I need to spend some tech time I think.
This is brilliant must have taken an age to put together, I have pinned this onto my blogging board. I will be reviewing it when I go self hosted! eek. x
I have been looking for something like this for ages especially regarding adsense and monetization as I want to be able to make money from my blog. I keep being offered affiliate programs but I am afraid it will make my blog look cluttered and I am a fan of the minimal look
There’s a lot of these I haven’t heard of! I am SO checking out faded. I’ll also be looking into redirect. I also wish blogger had some of these awesome plugins. Great post, thanks! 🙂
Really helpful guide for newbie bloggers. I bet that took some time to pull together!
Wow this is a fantastic resource! Thank you so much for sharing. I have been blogging for only four months and although I am impressed at how much terminology I have picked up in this time, I clearly have much more to learn too!! This list is going to be invaluable to me. I will be printing off and taking with me to future blog events so that I can sneak a peak whenever the terminology baffles me!! 🙂
Author
So glad it is helpful. Good luck with your blogging x
What a brilliant idea! Firstly I am in awe of your knowledge and secondly for a newbie like me this is a super resource, thanks! #thelist
That is an impressive list. Most of them I was aware of, but there are some new terms there for me as well, so thank you xx
#thelist
That is a very comprehensive list. Several on there I wasn’t aware of. I’m going to have to study it in greater detail. Thanks for sharing, must have taken some time to put together. Thanks also for hosting #TheList
Wow. Just wow!
A great list here! I enjoyed reading this post and found it useful. Now i finally get the difference between a blog hop and a blog linky! #TheList
Angela from daysinbed
Blimey I thought it would be one thing per letter, this is amazing!!!! x
Author
I aim to please! 😉 xx
Wow. So many, many words I don’t know the meaning of. I am definitely bookmarking this when I get home. #TheList
This is awesome, what a great effort! Also, so many things are new to me, like “Evergreen” and “Death to the Stock Photo.” Thanks! #TheList
Wow, my mouth fell open at this post… I expected one term for each letter, this is a dictionary! Well Done! I’ll definitely be bookmarking this for if I have ANY queries #thelist
What a useful post! Thank you so much! I am bookmarking this for them days I am completely baffled by something 🙂 #TheList
This is perfect! I saving it to my favourites to refer back to 🙂 It must have taken ages to put together! Thanks for hosting #TheList
Debbie
Thats about as comprehensive a list as I’ve seen about blogging
This is so brilliant. Definitely a must read list for all bloggers. I have a feeling I’m going to be coming back to this again and again. xx
You really have challenges yourself! This is going on my Pinterest board for future reference 🙂
#TheList
Wow – this is a really useful resource Aby – thanks so much for sharing! #TheList
Wow, what a great list! And there’s so much out there isn’t there? I’ve just started and don’t know 70% of what you have listed but am going to check each one out. Good excuse for me to skip cleaning today LOL. #TheList
BRAVO! What a list and very handy. Thank you for always being such an asset to the blogging community!
Author
Ah thank you huni x
Wow Aby! That’s quite a list – and quite a challenge, but so fab as well! Thanks for hosting #thelist and of course for this list! x
Thanks for this – it’s already proving useful! 🙂 #thelist
Wow…awesome list! Made me realise just how much I don’t know!!! Thanks so much; will definitely become a ‘go to’ list! #TheList
Wow Aby I’ve never seen a list like this that explains what everything means, I’d also never heard of Adsense so will check that out, super helpful as always xo
This is so handy. There’s a few free photo sites that I haven’t heard of before. I’ll definitely be checking those out. Something missing that you might want to add is Facebook 🙂 X #thelist
An awesome reference for all of us bloggers.
Great post Aby 🙂 x
That is some list. I am going to have sit down comfy and read through this properly if that is possible with a 3 year and 9 months old. 🙂
Wow Aby this must’ve taken you so much time to put together! It really is super useful – there’s so much in there I hadn’t heard of. Thanks so much xx #TheList
Wow … well done. I can see why brain hurt resulted from this; you even got an ‘X’. Good job! A useful reference list, for sure. #TheList
This is a really useful resource and must have taken ages to put together! Thanks for sharing it! #TheList
As a newbie this is a fantastic resource – I will be spending little mans nap times looking at this A-Z and learning. Thank you for taking the time to create this.
This looks a great list that can be referred back to time and time again. Thanks for creating and sharing.