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WordPress Glossary
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In this article

This document is designed to offer definitions of various terms, exclusive to WordPress,

that users may not be familiar with.

If you are a contributor, don’t add definitions for generic terms �API, PHP,
JavaScript, etc…).

Absolute Path
(also known as a )

The complete location of a file or directory within a computer filesystem. An absolute

path starts at the root directory (or drive letter) and continues up the directory hierarchy
until the specific file or directory is reached. This contrasts with a relative path, which
does not start at the root directory.

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The syntax of absolute paths differs by operating system. On Microsoft Windows, they
begin with a drive letter and use a backslash to separate directory names. Absolute paths
on macOS and Linux lack drive letters and use a forward slash as the directory separator.

Examples:

• Windows: C:\Users\Matt\www\blog\images\icecream.jpg
• macOS� /Users/Matt/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg
• Linux: /home/Matt/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg

To find the absolute filesystem path of the directory containing a web page, copy the
code below into a new text file, save the file as path.php (thus making a simple PHP web
page), and move that file to your web server. Then direct your web browser to the URL
address of that file (e.g. http://www.example.com/path.php).

<?php
echo getcwd();
?>

See also: Path (computing) at Wikipedia

Absolute URI
(also known as a )

A URI that contains the complete location of a resource (as opposed to a relative URI�.

Examples:

• http://www.example.com/blog/images/icecream.jpg
• ftp://ftp.example.com/users/h/harriet/www/

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Action
In WordPress; an Action is a PHP function that is executed at specific points throughout
the WordPress Core.

Developers can create a Action using the Action API to add or remove code from
an existing Action by specifying any existing Hook. This process is called “hooking“.

A developer may want to code to the footer of a Theme. This could be

accomplished by writing new function, then Hooking it to the wp_footer Action.

because custom Actions allow you to

code from existing Actions. Whereas custom Filters allow you to specific
data (such as a variable) found within an existing Action.

• See also: Filter, Hook, Terminology Confusion

• Related articles: Actions, Action Reference, add_action()
• Forum posts: Filters vs. Actions Discussion and Explanation

Admin Bar
An area of the screen just above your site that gives you quick access to features such as
adding a new post or editing your profile. It is only visible if you are logged in.

The admin bar concept was added to WordPress in Version 3.1 and was replaced by the
Toolbar in WordPress Version 3.3. To turn it on (or off), open the Dashboard and navigate
to Administration � Users � Your Profile.

• Related articles: Toolbar

• See also: Your Profile Screen

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Ajax
is a technique that web pages use to have the server perform certain processing
without reloading the web page. For example, when you approve a comment in a
WordPress blog, WordPress uses Ajax to change the comment’s status, and you see the
change without having to reload the Comments screen.

• Related article: AJAX

• External link: AJAX �Wikipedia)

Apache
is short for , 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.

API
Please refer to Wikipedia page for a definition.

Array
An 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.

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A one-dimension array seven �7� elements would be:

105 200 54 53 102 13 405

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

• External links: Array Programming at Wikipedia, Array at freedictionary.com

ASCII
(pronounced as “ask ee”) is a standard but limited character set containing only
English letters, numbers, a few common symbols, and common English punctuation
marks. WordPress content is not restricted to ASCII, but can include any Unicode
characters.

ASCII is short for merican tandard ode for nformation nterchange.

• External links: ASCII �Wikipedia, with character set table)

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Atom
A format for syndicating content on news-like sites, viewable by Atom-aware programs
called news readers or aggregators.

• See also: News reader, RSS, RDF

• External links: Atom (standard) at Wikipedia

Attribute sources
An object describing the attributes shape of a block. The keys can be named as most
appropriate to describe the state of a block type. The value for each key is a function
which describes the strategy by which the attribute value should be extracted from the
content of a saved post’s content. When processed, a new object is created, taking the
form of the keys defined in the attribute sources, where each value is the result of the
attribute source function.

Attributes
The object representation of the current state of a block in post content. When loading a
saved post, this is determined by the attribute sources for the block type. These values
can change over time during an editing session when the user modifies a block, and are
used when determining how to serialize the block.

Autosave
When you are writing or editing your posts and pages, the changes you make are
automatically saved every 2 minutes. In the lower right corner of the editor, you’ll see a
notification of when the entry was last saved to the database. Autosaves are

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automatically enabled for all posts and pages. There is only one autosave for each
post/page. Each new autosave overwrites the previous autosave in the database.

• Related articles: Revision Management

• External links: WordPress.com Support � Autosave

Avatar
An is a graphic image or picture that represents a user.

• See also: Gravatar

• Related articles: Using Gravatars
• External links: Avatar (computing) at Wikipedia

Back End
The back end is the area that authorized users can sign into to add, remove and modify
content on the website. This may also be referred to as “WordPress”, “admin” or “the
administration area”.

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.

Block
The abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the

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content or layout of a webpage. The idea combines concepts of what in WordPress today
we achieve with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent
API and user experience.

Block ~Inserter~ Library

Primary interface for selecting from the available blocks, triggered by plus icon buttons
on Blocks or in the top-left of the editor interface.

Block categories
These are not a WordPress taxonomy, but instead used internally to sort blocks in the
Block Library.

Block name
A unique identifier for a block type, consisting of a plugin-specific namespace and a short
label describing the block’s intent. e.g. core/image

Block styles
The CSS styles that are part of the block, either via its stylesheet or via the block markup
itself. For example, a class attached to the block markup is considered block styles.

Compare to . In contraposition to Global Styles, block styles are sometimes

referred to as Local Styles.

Learn more about Block Styles.

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Block supports
An API for blocks to declare what features they support. By declaring support for a
feature, the API would add additional attributes to the block and matching UI controls for
most of the existing block supports.

See Block Supports reference documentation for a deep dive into the API.

Block Template parts

Building on Block Templates, these parts help set structure for reusable items like a
Footer or Header that one typically sees in a WordPress site. They are primarily site
structure and are never to be mixed with the post content editor. With Full Site Editing
and block based themes, users can create their own arbitrary Template Parts, save those
in the database for their site, and re-use them throughout their site. Template parts are
equivalent – in blocks – of theme template parts. They are generally defined by a theme
first, carry some semantic meaning (could be swapped between themes such as a
header), and can only be inserted in the site editor context (within “templates”).

Block Templates
A template is a predefined arrangement of blocks, possibly with predefined attributes or
placeholder content. You can provide a template for a post type, to give users a starting
point when creating a new piece of content, or inside a custom block with
the InnerBlocks component. At their core, templates are simply HTML files of block
markup that map to templates from the standard WordPress template hierarchy, for
example index, single or archive. This helps control the front-end defaults of a site that
are not edited via the Page Editor or the Post Editor. See the templates documentation for
more information.

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Block Themes
A theme built in block forward way that allows Full Site Editing to work. The core of a
block theme are its block templates and block template parts. To date, block theme
templates have been HTML files of block markup that map to templates from the
standard WordPress template hierarchy.

Block type
In contrast with the blocks composing a particular post, a block type describes the
blueprint by which any block of that type should behave. So while there may be many
images within a post, each behaves consistent with a unified image block type definition.

Blog
A , or , is an online journal, diary, or serial published by a person or group of
people.

Blogs are commonly used by individuals, peer groups, companies, or organizations.

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
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.

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• See also: Blogosphere, Blogroll

Blogosphere
The is the subset of internet web sites which are, or relate to, blogs.

• See also: Blog, Blogroll

Blogroll
A 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. The default blogroll (aka links) included in
WordPress was removed in version 3.5.

• See also: Blog, Blogosphere, Feed, News reader

• External links: News aggregator at Wikipedia

Bookmarklet
A (or ) is a “faux” bookmark containing scripting code, usually written
in JavaScript, that allows the user to perform a function.

Examples:

• The delicious.com bookmarklets allow users to quickly post a link to their

delicious.com bookmarks list.
• Tantek’s favelets

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Boolean
A variable or expression which evaluates to either true or false.

• External links: PHP Boolean data type

Category
Each post in WordPress can be filed under one or more . Thoughtful
categorization allows posts to be grouped with others of similar content and aids in the
navigation of a site.

Please note that a category should not be confused with a category, which is
used to classify and manage links.

Capabilities
A is permission to perform one or more types of task. Each user of a
WordPress site might have some permissions but not others, depending on their role. For
example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts
(the “edit_posts” capability), but not permission to edit other users’ posts (the
“edit_others_posts” capability). WordPress comes with six roles and over fifty capabilities
in its role-based access system. Plugins can modify the system.

• Related article: Roles and Capabilities

• External link: Role-based access control �Wikipedia)

CGI
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�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 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 &lt; for the
less than (<) symbol use &gt; for the greater than (>) symbol

• Related articles: Fun Character Entities

Character Set
A 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 � ) 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.

• See also: Collation

• Related articles: Editing wp-config.php, Converting Database Character Sets
• External links: Character set at Wikipedia, Unicode at Wikipedia, UTF�8 at Wikipedia,
Character sets and collation at MySQL

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chmod
is a Unix/Linux shell command used to change permissions on files. Its name is a
contraction of “ ange e.”

• Related articles: Changing File Permissions, UNIX Shell Skills, htaccess for
subdirectories

Class
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.

• Related articles: CSS, Blog Design and Layout

Classic block
A block which embeds the TinyMCE editor as a block, TinyMCE was the base of the
previous core editor. Older content created prior to the block editor will be loaded in to a
single Classic block.

Codex
The is the series of articles that show users how to use WordPress. WordPress
users contribute documentation to the codex voluntarily.

• External links: Codex

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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 � )
character set, and when the WordPress MySQL database tables are created during the
installation process, MySQL assigns collation to those tables. Beginning
with Version 2.2, the collation (and character set) used by WordPress is defined in the
wp-config.php file.

• See also: Character set

• Related articles: Editing wp-config.php, Converting Database Character Sets
• External links: Collation at Wikipedia, Character set at Wikipedia, UTF�8 at Wikipedia,
Character sets and collation at MySQL

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.

• See also: Blog

• Related articles: Comment-related plugins, Dealing with comment spam, Settings
Discussion SubPanel
• External links: Hyperlink at Wikipedia

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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 , or , 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.

• See also: Blog

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.

• Related articles: Using cPanel, Adding New Themes by using cPanel

• External links: cPanel website

CSS
, or , 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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• Related articles: CSS, Blog Design and Layout

• External links: CSS at W3C, Open standards at Wikipedia, W3C.org

CVS
stands for and is the software that used to be used to
coordinate WordPress development. As of February 2005, this function is carried out by
Subversion �SVN�.

For more information on Subversion, see Using Subversion.

Dashboard
In WordPress a is the main administration screen for a site (a weblog), or for a
network of sites. It summarizes information about the site or network, and also external
information, in one or more widgets that the Dashboard user can enable, disable, and
move around.

• Related articles: Dashboard Screen

Database
A in computing terms is software used to manage information in an organized
fashion. WordPress uses the MySQL or MariaDB relational databases management
system for storing and retrieving the content of your blog, such as posts, comments, and
so on.

• Related articles: Database Description, Backing Up Your Database

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Database version
In WordPress, the is a number that increases every time changes are
made to the way WordPress organizes the data in its database. It is not the same as the
version of the database software, MySQL or MariaDB.

For example, the database version in WordPress 3.3 was 19470, and the database version
in WordPress 3.3.1 did not change. This tells anyone planning to use backed-up data from
the older version that they do not need to check for changes in the structure of the data.

WordPress stores its database version in the database, as the option named “db_version”
in every WordPress site’s “wp_options” table. �The table name prefix “wp_” may be
missing or different in some cases.)

• Related articles: Database Description, How do you force a database upgrade?

Default theme
Every installation of WordPress has a default theme. The default theme is sometimes
called the , because if the active theme is for some reason lost or deleted,
WordPress will fallback to using the default theme.

Deprecated
functions or template tags are no longer supported, and will soon be
obsolete.

• Related articles: “Deprecated Functions” Category

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Developer
A , or , is a computer programmer who is active in creating, modifying, and
updating a software product.

• Related articles: Plugin API

DIV
A element in HTML marks a section of text. DIVs are used extensively in WordPress to
apply CSS stylings to particular blog elements.

• Related articles: CSS, Blog Design and Layout

DNS
, the domain name system, is the system that maps domain names to IP addresses.
When you use a web browser to visit a website, your browser first extracts the site’s
domain name from the URL. Then it uses the DNS to find the IP address for that domain
name. Then it connects to that IP address.

• External link: Domain Name System �Wikipedia)

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.

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• External links: DOM at Wikipedia, DOM at W3C.org

Domain name
A is a name used for identification purposes on the Internet. In WordPress a
domain name usually identifies a server where WordPress is installed. To make this work,
the Internet’s domain name system �DNS� maps the domain name to a server’s IP address.
For example, the domain name example.com maps to the IP address 192.0.43.10. Many
domain names can map to the same IP address, allowing a single server to run many
websites. For example, the domain names www.example.com and example.net also map
to the IP address 192.0.43.10.

• External link: Domain name �Wikipedia)

Draft
The 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.

Dynamic block
A type of block where the content of which may change and cannot be determined at the
time of saving a post, instead calculated any time the post is shown on the front of a site.
These blocks may save fallback content or no content at all in their JavaScript
implementation, instead deferring to a PHP block implementation for runtime rendering.

Excerpt
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An 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 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 , which refers to words before the
<!--more--> in a post’s content. When typing a long post you can insert the <!--
more--> Quicktag after a few sentences to act as a cut-off point. When the post is
displayed, the , followed by a hyperlink (such as ), is
displayed. Your visitor can then click on that link to see the full version of your post. The
Template Tag, the_content() should be used to display the teaser.

• Related articles: Customizing the Read More, Excerpt

Back to the Top

Feed
A is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site
automatically looking for new content and then posting the information about new
content and updates to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the
latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS
(alternately defined as “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”), Atom or RDF
files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a
comprehensive summary of feeds. Feeds generally are based on XML technology.

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Feed Reader
The role of Feedreader is to gather and display the webfeed from various website to one
place.

Filter
In WordPress, a Filter is a function that is associated with an existing Action by specifying
any existing Hook.

Developers can create Filters using the Filter API to code from an
existing Action. This process is called “hooking“.

because custom Actions allow you to

code from existing Actions. Whereas custom Filters allow you to specific
data (such as a variable) found within an existing Action.

• See also: Action, Hook, Terminology Confusion

• Related articles: Filters, Filter Reference, add_filter()

Footer area
A is a horizontal area provided by a theme for displaying information other
than the main content of the web page. Themes may provide one or more footer areas
below the content. Footer areas usually contain widgets that an administrator of the site
can customize.

In a theme, footer areas are generated by a template file, typically named sidebar-
footer.php.

• See also: Sidebar

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• Related articles: Templates, Customizing Your Sidebar, Stepping Into Templates,

Template Hierarchy

Front End
The front end is what your visitors see and interact with when they come to your website,
www.YourSite.com.

FTP
, or , is a client-server protocol for transferring files. It is one
way to download files, and the most common way to upload files to a server.

An FTP client is a program which can download files from, or upload files to, an FTP
server.

You may need to use an FTP client to upload your WordPress files to your web server,
particularly if you use a hosting provider.

• Related articles: FTP Clients, Uploading WordPress to a remote host, Using FileZilla

Full Site Editing or FSE

This refers to a collection of features that ultimately allows users to edit their entire
website using blocks as the starting point. This feature set includes everything from block
patterns to global styles to templates to design tools for blocks (and more). First released
in WordPress 5.9.

Gallery
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As defined by Andy Skelton, , introduced with WordPress 2.5, is specifically an

exposition of images attached to a post. In that same vein, an upload is “attached to a
post” when you upload it while editing a post.

In the uploader there is a “Gallery” tab that shows all the uploads attached to the post
you are editing. When you have more than one attachment in a post, you should see at
the bottom of the Gallery tab a button marked “Insert gallery”. That button inserts a
shortcode “” into the post. WordPress replaces that shortcode with an exposition of all
images attached to that post. Non-image file types are excluded from the gallery.

Note: If you don’t see the “Insert gallery” button, it may be because you have not
attached two images to the post.

The pretty URLs for attachments are made only after you have published the post and
should be composed as the post permalink plus the attachment slug.

• Related articles: Gallery Shortcode, Shortcode API

gettext
The system is a set of tools and standards for language translation, used by
WordPress to provide versions in many languages. In WordPress a text string for
translation may have a domain and a context. For example, a plugin might specify its own
domain for translations, and a context might help translators to provide different
translations of the same English word or phrase in different parts of the user interface.

• Related articles: WordPress in Your Language, Translating WordPress, I18n for

WordPress Developers
• External links: gettext �Wikipedia), GNU gettext

GMT
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(“Greenwich Mean Time”, the time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England)
is the old name of the time zone from which all other time zones were measured. It has
been replaced by UTC �“Universal Time, Coordinated”), but for most practical purposes
UTC and GMT are the same, so the term GMT is still commonly used.

• External links: Greenwich Mean Time, Time zone, UTC �Wikipedia)

Gravatar
A is a globally recognized avatar (a graphic image or picture that represents a
user). Typically a user’s gravatar is associated with their email address, and using a
service such as Gravatar.com. The site owner to can configure their site so that a user’s
gravatar is displayed along with their comments.

• See also: Avatar

• Related articles: How to Use Gravatars in WordPress, Using Gravatars
• External links: Gravatar at Wikipedia

GUI
GUI stands for Graphical User Interface, pronounced as “gooey”. It is an interface that
allows users to point the mouse or cursor to graphical icons.

Gutenberg
Gutenberg is newly developed, block-oriented editor. It uses blocks to create all types of
content, replacing a half-dozen inconsistent ways of customizing WordPress, bringing it in
line with modern coding standards, and aligning with open web initiatives. These content
blocks transform how users, developers, and hosts interact with WordPress to make

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building rich web content easier and more intuitive, democratizing publishing — and work
— for everyone, regardless of technical ability.

Hack
A is a bit of code written to customize or extend the functionality of a software
product. Older versions of WordPress used a hack-based extension system, but versions
1.2 and above of WordPress use a Plugin API with hooks for extensions.

• See also: Hacking, Plugin

• Related articles: Changelog, Plugin API
• External links: Open source at Wikipedia

Hacking
is the process of writing code for, or contributing code to, a piece of software.

There is some controversy surrounding the meaning of this term. It began as a benign
term meaning “to exercise proficiency” or “to alter or improve,” but the popular media
have since construed it to mean “to break into a computer system, usually with malicious
intent.” Many in the computer industry have recently begun trying to ‘take back’ the word
from its popular mutation, and many have adopted the term cracking to replace the
malicious interpretation. Because of the desire to reclaim the word, you will often find the
term used in conjunction with open source projects, intended in its benign form. For more
information about the history of the term, please see Wikipedia’s article on Hacker.

• See also: Hack

• Related articles: Plugins

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Header Image
A is a wide picture that appears at the top of a WordPress website.

Hook
Hooks are specified, by the developer, in Actions and Filters. Here is a (hopefully)
complete list of all existing Hooks within WordPress.

Because Hooks are required by Actions and Filter you may hear the phrase “Action
Hooks” and “Filter Hooks” used from time to time.

In technical and strict terms: a Hook is an event, i.e. event as understood by Observer
pattern, invoked by the do_action() or apply_filters() call that afterwards triggers all the
action or filter functions, previously hooked to that event using add_action() or
add_filter(), respectively.

• See also: Action, Filter

• Related articles: Hooks, Actions and Filters, Plugin API/Hooks

Terminology Confusion
WordPress Codex and source code comments sometimes confuse the terms
“actions/filters” and “hooks“.

Actions, Filters and Hooks are also occasionally referred to as “action/filter hooks” or
“action/filter/hook functions”.

Hosting provider
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A is a company or organization which provides, usually for a fee,

infrastructure for making information accessible via the web. This involves the use of a
web server (including web server software such as Apache), and may involve one or more
related technologies, such as FTP, PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and operating system
software such as Linux or Unix.

• Related articles: Hosting WordPress

.htaccess
A file is a granular configuration file for the Apache web server software, used
to set or alter the server’s configuration settings for the directory in which it is present,
and/or its child directories.

WordPress uses an .htaccess file in conjunction with the mod_rewrite Apache module to
produce permalinks.

Note that .htaccess is a hidden file in Unix/Linux (as dictated by the preceding period ‘.’),
meaning it may not be visible using the default settings of some FTP clients.

• See also: chmod

• Related articles: htaccess for subdirectories, Using Permalinks, UNIX Shell Skills,
Changing File Permissions

HTML
, or , is a markup language used to describe the
semantic content of web pages. It is usually used with CSS and/or JavaScript. WordPress
renders web pages to conform to the HTML5 standard. The standard is set by the World
Wide Web Consortium �W3C�.

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IDE
Acronym for Integrated Development Environment. Is an application that provides several
tools for software development. An usually includes:

• source code editor, which is similar to a Text Editor

• debugger, in the case of WordPress, useful debuggers are those for PHP and
Javascript code
• automated builder

For our recommended IDEs, please see Editing Files.

Inspector
Deprecated term. See Settings Sidebar.

IP address
An is a unique number (e.g. 70.84.29.148) assigned to a computer (or other
internet-capable information appliance, such as a network printer) to enable it to
communicate with other devices using the Internet Protocol. It is a computer’s identity on
the internet, and every computer connected to the internet is assigned at least one —
although the methods of assigning these addresses, and the permanence and duration of
their assignment, differ according to the use of the computer and the circumstances of its
internet use.

Every web server is assigned an IP address as well, but often times hosting providers will
assign multiple IP addresses to one computer, in the event that multiple web sites reside
on the same physical server. This is the case with most inexpensive ‘managed’ or ‘group’
hosting packages.

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Domain names were created to provide an easier means of accessing internet resources
than IP addresses, which are cumbersome to type and difficult to remember. Every
domain name has at least one corresponding IP address, but only a small number of IP
addresses have a domain name associated with them, since only computers that are
servers require domain names. The domain name system �DNS� is what maps domain
names to IP addresses.

• External links: IP address �Wikipedia)

ISAPI
�Internet Server Application Programming Interface) is a set of programming
standards designed to allow programmers to quickly and easily develop efficient Web-
based applications. Developed by Process Software and Microsoft Corporation, ISAPI is
intended to replace CGI programs.

• External links: ISAPI at Wikipedia

JavaScript
is a programming language that WordPress uses to make certain processing
occur in your web browser when it is inconvenient or impossible for the server to do that
processing. For example, when you reply to a comment in a WordPress blog, WordPress
uses JavaScript to move the comment form inside the comment you are replying to.

• See also: AJAX, HTML, XHTML

• Related article: Using Javascript
• External link: JavaScript �Wikipedia)

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Linux
is an open source computer operating system, created by Linus Torvalds, similar in
style to Unix. It is popular in web server and other high-performance computing
environments, and has recently begun to gain popularity in workstation environments as
well.

• External links: Linux at Shortopedia

Local Styles
See Block Styles.

Mac OS X
is an operating system specifically for modern Macintosh computers. The
operating system was commercially released in 2001. It consists of two main parts:
Darwin, an open source Unix-like environment which is based on the BSD source tree and
the Mach microkernel, adapted and further developed by Apple Computer with
involvement from independent developers; and a proprietary GUI named Aqua, developed
by Apple.

• Related articles: UNIX Shell Skills

MariaDB
MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL relational database system developed by most of the
original developers of MySQL. It works equally well with WordPress.

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Menu
are lists of links to pages and posts that appear on WordPress websites.

Meta
has several meanings, but generally means . In WordPress, meta
usually refers to type information. As described in Meta Tags in
WordPress, meta is the HTML tag used to describe and define a web page to the outside
world (search engines). In the article Post Meta Data, meta refers to information
associated with each , such as the author’s name and the date posted. Meta Rules
define the general protocol to follow in using the Codex. Also, many WordPress based
sites offer a Meta section, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register at
that site. Finally, Meta is a MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions
within Codex.

• External links: Wikipedia’s Article on Meta

Microformats
provide a way for programs to read certain information in web pages
without making the pages look any different to humans. They add semantics to the
generic HTML markup in order for these programs to understand the meaning of specific
parts of a web page content which is better recognized by humans. For example, a web
page displaying a user’s profile could use microformats to make it easy for a program to
extract the user’s contact information so that it can be added to an address book in a
single operation. In WordPress, some themes and plugins support some microformats.

• Related: Themes and plugins providing microformats support

• External links: Microformats.org

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MIME
stands for and is an Internet standard that
extends the format of email to support:

• Text in character sets other than ASCII

• Non-text attachments
• Message bodies with multiple parts
• Header information in non-ASCII character sets

MIME’s use, however, has grown beyond describing the content of email and now is often
used to describe content type in general including for the web and as a storage for rich
content in some commercial products.

• External links: IANA Media Types Specification, Wikipedia

Moblogging
is the act of posting to one’s blog via a mobile device (e.g. mobile phone,
smartphone, or tablet). It is pronounced as mōbə-logging or mōb-logging, or sometimes
as mŏb-logging in reference to smart mobs.

• Related articles: Moblog Clients, Post to your blog using email

mod_rewrite
is an extension module of the Apache web server software which allows for
“rewriting” of URLs on-the-fly. Rewrite rules use regular expressions to parse the
requested URL from the client, translate it into a different URL, and serve the content of
this new URL under the original URL or pointing the client to make the new URL request.

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WordPress uses mod_rewrite for its permalink structure, and also for multisite networks,
which are both optional functionality.

• Related articles: Using Permalinks, Create A Network

Multisite
is a feature of WordPress 3.0 and later versions that allows multiple virtual sites
to share a single WordPress installation. When the multisite feature is activated, the
original WordPress site can be converted to support a network of sites.

• Related article: Create A Network

MySQL
is a popular open source SQL �Structured Query Language) database
implementation, available for many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS
X.

WordPress requires a MySQL database to store all blog information, including posts,
comments, metadata, and other information.

WordPress also works with MySQL-compatible databases such as MariaDB and Percona
Server.

• Related articles: Database Description

• External links: MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server

Back to the Top

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Navigation
Navigation is the term used to describe text on a page that, when selected, redirects you
to a corresponding page elsewhere on the website. Navigation may sometimes be
referred to as the menu, links and hyperlinks.

Navigation Block
A block that allows you to edit a site’s navigation menu, both in terms of structure and
design.

Network
In the WordPress user interface, a is a collection of separate sites created in a
single WordPress installation by the multisite feature. The sites in a WordPress network
are not interconnected like the things in other kinds of networks. They are very like the
separate blogs at WordPress.com.

In WordPress code the network is known as the site and the sites are known as blogs.

• Related articles: Create A Network

News reader
A or is a computer program which tracks
syndicated information feeds, via RSS, RDF, or Atom. Most news aggregators allow one to
‘subscribe’ to a feed, and automatically keep track of the articles one has read, similar to
an email client tracking read emails.

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Many blogs make their content available in feed form for the convenience of readers
using news aggregators. WordPress can generate feeds in RSS and/or Atom formats.

• External links: News aggregator at Wikipedia

Nonce
is used for security purposes to protect against unexpected or duplicate requests
that could cause undesired permanent or irreversible changes to the web site and
particularly to its database. Specifically, a nonce is an one-time token generated by a web
site to identify future requests to that web site. When a request is submitted, the web site
verifies if a previously generated nonce expected for this particular kind of request was
sent along and decides whether the request can be safely processed, or a notice of
failure should be returned. This could prevent unwanted repeated, expired or malicious
requests from being processed.

Nonce is usually included in a hidden HTML form field or as a part of an URL and
therefore sent with a request by submitting a form field or visiting a link. If a request is not
verified, the web site could generate a new nonce in its response and prompt the user to
intentionally confirm the repetition of the request. In WordPress, the response message is
“Are you sure you want to do this?” by default.

• Related articles: WordPress Nonces

Open Source
is simply programming code that can be read, viewed, modified, and
distributed, by anyone who desires. WordPress is distributed under an open source GNU
General Public License �GPL�.

• Related articles: GPL, License

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• External links: Open Source Initiative, Open Source at Wikipedia, Source Code at
Wikipedia

Options
are pieces of data that WordPress uses to store various preferences and
configuration settings. By using the Options API that is a simple and standardized way of
storing data in the database, options can be added, changed, removed, and retrieved,
from the wp_options table.

• Related articles: Option Reference, Transients API, Options API

Output Compression
is the removal of white spaces, carriage returns, new lines and tabs
from your HTML document. This reduces the file size of the HTML document without
changing the functionality.

• Related articles: Output Compression

Page (post type)

A is often used to present “static” information about yourself or your site. A good
example of a Page is information you would place on an About Page. A Page should not
be confused with the time-oriented objects called posts. Pages are typically “timeless” in
nature and live “outside” your blog.

The word “page” has long been used to describe any HTML document on the web. In
WordPress, however, “Page” refers to a very specific feature first introduced in WordPress
version 1.5.

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• Related articles: Pages, Write Page SubPanel

Patterns
WordPress 6.3 renamed Reusable Blocks to Patterns. A synced pattern will behave
in exactly the same way as a reusable block.

Patterns are layouts of blocks that can be inserted as starter content that are meant to be
changed by the user every time. Once inserted, they exist as a local save and are not
global.

Related articles: Patterns, Comparing Patterns to Template Parts.

Perl
is an acronym for , but it’s most commonly
spelled as a proper name. It’s a very popular and powerful scripting language used for
web applications, although its use is being largely replaced by PHP in the mainstream.
One of its strengths lies in its speedy and effective use of regular expressions. Its
unofficial motto is, “There’s More Than One Way To Do It,” or “TMTOWTDI,” owing to the
extreme flexibility of the syntax.

WordPress does not use Perl, and it is therefore not required.

Permalink
A is a URL at which a resource or article will be permanently stored. Many
pages driven by Content Management Systems contain excerpts of content which is
frequently rotated, making linking to bits of information within them a game of chance.

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Permalinks allow users to bookmark full articles at a URL they know will never change,
and will always present the same content.

Permalinks are optional in WordPress, but are highly recommended as they greatly
increase the cleanliness of URL. WordPress uses the Apache module mod_rewrite to
implement its permalink system.

• Related articles: Using Permalinks

• External links: URL at Wikipedia

Permissions
are security settings restricting or allowing users to perform certain
functions. In the case of files on Unix or Linux systems, there are three types of
permissions: read, write, and execute. In the case of MySQL or MariaDB databases, there
are many more: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc. — although MySQL/MariaDB refer
to them as privileges.

• Related articles: Changing File Permissions

PHP
is a recursive acronym for . It is a popular server-side
scripting language designed specifically for integration with HTML, and is used (often in
conjunction with MySQL or MariaDB� in Content Management Systems and other web
applications. It is available on many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS
X, and is open source software.

WordPress is written using PHP and requires it for operation.

• External links: PHP Website, PHP for Designers — by WordPress lead developer

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Matthew Mullenweg, PHP at OnLAMP

phpMyAdmin
is a popular, powerful web-based interface for administering MySQL or
MariaDB databases. It is open source, written in PHP, and is among the better tools
available for working with MySQL or MariaDB databases.

• Related articles: phpMyAdmin

• External links: phpMyAdmin web site

Ping
Within the WordPress interface, “ping” is sometimes used to refer to Pingbacks and
Trackbacks.

In general computer terms, “ping” is a common utility used in a TCP/IP environment to

determine if a given IP Address exists or is reachable. Typically, Ping is used to diagnose
a network connection problem. Many times you will be asked, “Can you ping that
address?”. That means, does the Ping utility return a success message trying to reach the
“problem” IP Address?

• External links: Ping at Wikipedia

Pingback
lets you notify the author of an article if you link to his article (article on a blog,
of course). If the links you include in an article you write on a blog lead to a blog which is
pingback-enabled, then the author of that blog gets a notification in the form of a
pingback that you linked to his article.

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If you’re feeling really geeky you may want to check out the Pingback technical
specification or Otto’s “How Pingbacks Work” explanation.

• See also: Trackback

• Related articles: Introduction to Blogging: Pingbacks

Plugin
A is a group of PHP functions that can extend the functionality present in a
standard WordPress weblog. These functions may all be defined in one php file, or may
be spread among more than one file. Usually, a plugin is a PHP file that can be uploaded
to the “wp-content/plugins” directory on your webserver, where you have installed
WordPress. Once you have uploaded the plugin file, you should be able to “turn it on” or
Enable it from the “Plugins” page in the administration interface of your weblog. The
WordPress source code contains hooks that can be used by plugins.

• See also: Hack, Hacking

• Related articles: Plugins

Port
Within the context of the WordPress community, a is a bit of code that has been
rewritten to be compatible with WordPress. For example, if someone wrote a plugin for
MoveableType, WordPress users may want to find a port of that plugin for WordPress.
Port can also be used as a verb: to rewrite a piece of software for a different
platform/language.

• External links: Porting at Wikipedia

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Post
Also known as “articles” and sometimes incorrectly referred to as “blogs”. In WordPress,
“posts” are articles that you write to populate your blog.

Post settings
A sidebar region containing metadata fields for the post, including scheduling, visibility,
terms, and featured image.

Post Slug
A few lowercase words separated by dashes, describing a post and usually derived from
the post title to create a user-friendly (that is, readable and without confusing characters)
permalink. Post slug substitutes the “%posttitle%” placeholder in a custom permalink
structure. Post slug should not be changed and is especially useful if the post title tends
to be long or changes frequently.

Post Status
The status of a post, as set in the Administration Panel, Write Post SubPanel is either:
(viewable by everyone), (incomplete post viewable by anyone with
proper user level), or (viewable only to WordPress users at Administrator level).

• Related articles: Post Status

Post Type
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Post type refers to the various structured data that is maintained in the WordPress posts
table. Native (or built-in) registered post types are , , , , and
. Custom post types are also supported in WordPress and can be defined
with register_post_type(). Custom post types allow users to easily create and manage
such things as portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, and whatever
a user or developer can imagine.

• Related articles: Post Types

Query
The process behind the scenes. See below.

• Related articles: Query Overview, Custom Queries, WP Query, WP User Query

• See also: query string, query variable

Query Block
A block that replicates the classic WP_Query and allows for further customization with
additional functionality.

Query String
A sequence of codes in a Uniform Resource Identifier �URI� that a web page uses to
determine what dynamic data to display. The query string in a URI comes after an initial
question mark, and may contain several parameters separated by ampersands.
WordPress uses query strings to indicate criteria to search for specific posts or sets of
posts in the database. The use of query strings is generally believed to impede the
indexing of dynamic pages by search engines. For this reason, it is often desirable to use
a method such as mod_rewrite to reduce exposure of query strings to search engines and

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other site visitors.

Query Variable
A variable passed through the query string. For example, in the query string
?category_name=tech&feed=atom, there are two query variables: category_name with a
value of “tech”, and feed with a value of “atom”.

QuickTag
A is a shortcut, or one-click button, that inserts HTML code into your posts. The
<em> (emphasis) and </em> (stop emphasis) HTML tags are example of Quicktags.
Some Quicktags, such as �!–contactform�, insert HTML comment code that is used by
plugins to replace text or perform certain actions.

RDF
Resource Description Framework. A language used to describe the locations of resources
on the web. WordPress can produce output in RDF format that describes the locations of
posts. Like RSS, RDF is used for content syndication.

Recordset
refers to the group of records or result returned from a database query.

• See also MySQL, wpdb database class

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Relative Path
A is the location of a file in relation to the current working directory and
does not begin with a slash (/). This is different from an absolute path which gives an
exact location.

• See also: Absolute Path

• External links: Path_Computing at Wikipedia

Relative URI
A relative URI (sometimes called a ) is a partial URI that is interpreted
(resolved) relative to a .

On the World Wide Web, relative URIs come in two forms:

A is interpreted relative to the domain root:

/images/icecream.jpg → http://domain.example/images/icecream.jpg

A is interpreted relative to the URL of the current

document. E.g., on the web page http://domain.example/icecream/chocolate.html,

strawberry.html → http://domain.example/icecream/strawberry.html

Wikipedia: URI Resolution

RichText
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A common component enabling rich content editing including bold, italics, hyperlinks, etc.

RSS
“Really Simple Syndication“: a format for syndicating many types of content, including
blog entries, torrent files, video clips on news-like sites; specifically frequently updated
content on a Web site, and is also known as a type of “feed” or “aggregator”. An RSS feed
can contain a summary of content or the full text, and makes it easier for people to keep
up to date with sites they like in an automated manner (much like e-mail).

The content of the feed can be read by using software called an RSS or Feed reader.
Feed readers display hyperlinks, and include other metadata (information about
information) that helps people decide whether they want to read more, follow a link, or
move on.

The original intent of RSS is to make information come to you (via the feed reader)
instead of you going out to look for it (via the Web).

Programs called news aggregators permit users to view many feeds at once, providing
‘push’ content constantly. See Category:Feeds for Codex resources about bringing RSS
feeds into WordPress. See also RDF Site Summary.

RTL
A written language is Right-to-left when its script flows from the right side of the page to
the left.

• Related articles: Right-to-Left Language Support

Robots.txt
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Web Robots are programs which traverse the Web automatically. They are also called
Web Wanderers, Web Crawlers, and Spiders. Search Engines are the main Web Robots.
Some Web Robots look for a file named on your web server to see what and
where they should look for content and files on your web server. Some Web Robots
ignore this file.

• Related articles: Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

• External links: Google information about robots.txt, The Web Robots Page

Role
A gives users permission to perform a group of tasks. When a user logs in and is
authenticated, the user’s role determines which capabilities the user has, and each
capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. All users with the same role
normally have the same capabilities. For example, users who have the Author role usually
have permission to edit their own posts, but not permission to edit other users’ posts.
WordPress comes with six roles and over fifty capabilities in its role-based access
system. Plugins can modify the system.

• Related article: Roles and Capabilities

• External link: Role-based access control �Wikipedia)

Screen
In WordPress a is a web page used for managing part of a weblog (site) or
network. The term ‘screen’ is used to avoid confusion with ‘page‘, which has a specific
and different meaning in WordPress. For example, the web page used to manage posts is
known as the Posts Screen.

• Related article: Class_Reference/WP_Screen

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Serialization
The process of converting a block’s attributes object into HTML markup, which occurs
each time a block is edited.

Settings Sidebar
The panel on the right that contains the document and block settings. The sidebar is
toggled using the Settings gear icon. Block settings are shown when a block is selected,
otherwise document settings are shown.

Shell
A is a program which interacts directly with an operating system such as MS�DOS,
Unix/Linux, Mac OS X, or others — but it is most commonly associated with Unices. It is
often referred to as a ‘console’ or ‘command line’, because it is controlled using typed
commands rather than mouse or graphical interface input.

Most often, when interacting with a remote computer (as one would when configuring
WordPress), an additional “faux” shell is involved called SSH.

Some popular shell programs are:

• Bash �Bourne Again Shell)

• Tcsh (an expanded C Shell)
• Zsh

Shortcode
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A Shortcode is a technique for embedding a snippet of PHP code into the body of a page
or other content item.

Sidebar
A is a vertical column provided by a theme for displaying information other than
the main content of the web page. Themes usually provide at least one sidebar at the left
or right of the content. Sidebars usually contain widgets that an administrator of the site
can customize.

In a theme, sidebars are generated by a template file, typically named sidebar.php.

• See also: Footer area

• Related articles: Sidebars, Templates, Customizing Your Sidebar, Stepping Into
Templates, Template Hierarchy

Site
In the WordPress user interface, a can simply be the website created by WordPress,
or it can be a virtual website created as part of a network by the multisite feature. A site
in a network is virtual in the sense that it does not have its own directory on the server,
although it has its own URL and it might have its own domain name.

In WordPress code the site is the website created by WordPress. If multisite is in use, then
the site is the network website and each virtual website is known as a blog.

• Related article: Create A Network

Site Editor
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The cohesive experience that allows you to directly edit and navigate between various
templates, template parts, styling options, and more.

Slug
A is a few words that describe a post or a page. Slugs are usually a URL friendly
version of the post title (which has been automatically generated by WordPress), but a
slug can be anything you like. Slugs are meant to be used with permalinks as they help
describe what the content at the URL is.

Example post permalink: https://wordpress.org/development/2006/06/wordpress-203/

The slug for that post is “wordpress-203”.

Slugs are also used for post types, categories, tags, etc. Like post and page slugs, this is
usually for creating URL friendly versions of these items.

Smileys

Smileys (also called Smilies or Emoticons) are stylized representations of a human face,
usually displayed as yellow buttons with two dots for the eyes, and a half mouth. Smileys
are often used in WordPress Plugins. By default, WordPress automatically converts text
smileys to graphic images. When you type in your post you see when you preview or
publish your post.

Related article: Using Smilies

Spam
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Once upon a time, SPAM was an animal by-product that came in a can and was fodder for
many Monty Python sketches, but since the world-wide adoption of the internet as an
integral part of daily life, Spam has become synonymous with what is wrong with the
internet. Spam, in general terms, is an email or other forms of unsolicited advertising.
Spam is very easy to spread throughout the internet, and works on the principle that if
you send out thousands, or hundreds of thousands of unsolicited advertisements, scams,
or other questionable methods of making money, that you only need a very small
percentage of people to be fooled and you will make lots of money.

Common spam these days comes from online gambling sites and those trying to sell
drugs for “male enhancement.” Lately, web logs, or blogs, as we call them, have been
targeted by spammers to try to increase their site ratings in the search engines.
Spammers use various methods to distribute their electronic junk mail, and employ bots,
or computer programs to quickly and easily send email or comments to millions of
addresses and IPs all over the world.

Spammers can be difficult to track down as they often hijack peoples’ email and IP
addresses. When this happens, it may appear a friend sent you the spam, but in fact, the
spammer’s bot grabbed your friend’s email address and used it to hide the true source of
the spam. WordPress developers and community members are constantly working on
more and better ways to combat these annoying as they clog the internet with
their garbage. You can help by offering your talents, ideas, suggestions, or just by being
vigilant and installing any of the currently-available spam combating tools.

• External links: SPAM at Wikipedia

SSH
stands for Secure Shell. It is a communication protocol for connecting to remote
computers over TCP/IP. Various authentication methods can be used which make SSH
more secure than Telnet.

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SSL
stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is the predecessor to Transport Layer Security.
These are cryptographic protocols for secure communications across an unsecured
network like the Internet.

• External links: SSL at Wikipedia

Static block
A type of block where the content of which is known at the time of saving a post. A static
block will be saved with HTML markup directly in post content.

Stats
are a record showing how many views and visitors a WordPress blog or website
gets during a set period of time. Stats also show where in the world your viewers are.

String
In computer science a string is any finite sequence of characters (i.e., letters, numerals,
symbols and punctuation marks). Typically, programmers must enclose strings in
quotation marks for the data to be recognized as a string and not a number or variable
name.

• External links: String at Wikipedia

Structure tags
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These tags are used to customize WordPress permalinks. Structure tags are:
%year%, %day%, %hour%, %minute%, %second%, %post_id%, %postname%, %category%
and %author%. End permalink structure with either %post_id% or %postname%, so that
each permalink points to an individual post.

• Related articles: Permalinks

Subversion
Subversion is an open-source version control software tool used by the WordPress
Developers to maintain and track the changes and updates to the various WordPress
versions.

• Related articles: Using Subversion

• External links: Subversion access at wordpress.org, Subversion book at red-bean.com

SVC
stands for Switched Virtual Circuit. An SVC is a virtual circuit that is temporary
turned on during a session of data transfer.

• External links: Virtual circuit at Wikipedia

Syndication
See RSS� Really Simple Syndication

Back to the Top

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Tag
A Tag is a keyword which describes all or part of a Post. Think of it like a Category, but
smaller in scope. A Post may have several tags, many of which relate to it only
peripherally. Like Categories, Tags are usually linked to a page which shows all Posts
having the same Tag. Tags can be created on-the-fly by simply typing them into the Tag
field. By default, tags can be assigned only to the Post and custom post types.

Tags can also be displayed in clouds which show large numbers of Tags in various sizes,
colors, etc. This allows for a sort of total perspective on the blog, allowing people to see
the sort of things your blog is about most.

Many people confuse Tags and Categories, but the difference is easy: Categories
generally don’t change often, while your Tags usually change with every Post and are
closer to the topic of the Post.

Tagline
A tagline is a catchy phrase that describes the character or the attributes of the blog in a
brief, concise manner. Think of it as the slogan, or catchline for a weblog.

Task Based Documentation

Task based, or task oriented documentation is writing that takes you through a
process/task step-by-step; it is succinct, lacks jargon, is easily understood, and
structured entirely around performing specific tasks. In order to get to Z, you need to:

�� Step x
�� Step y
�� Step z

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Keep in mind that people who need to know how to perform a task usually need answers
quick!

Taxonomy
A allows for the classification of things. In WordPress, there are two built-in
taxonomies, categories and tags. These taxonomies help further classify posts and
custom post types. Also, custom taxonomies can be defined.

• See also: Category, Tag

• External links: Taxonomy at Wikipedia, register_taxonomy()

Telnet
Telnet is a communications protocol used to establish a connection to another computer.
Telnet runs on top of TCP/IP and is typically used in conjuction with terminal emulation
software to login to remote computers. Telnet is inherently insecure and has largely been
replaced by SSH

• External links: Telnet at Wikipedia

Template
In WordPress a is a file that defines an area of the web pages generated by a
theme. For example, there is typically a template for the header area at the top of the web
pages, a template for the content, a template for the sidebars, and so on. The templates
are like building blocks that make up the complete web page.

• Related articles: Templates, Stepping Into Templates, Template Hierarchy

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Template Editing Mode

A scaled down direct editing experience allowing you to edit/change/create the template
a post/page uses.

Template Tag
In a WordPress Theme, template tags are used in template files to generate specific
programming instructions. They are used to display generated content and information on
a WordPress site. Template tags are short programming words, also known as functions,
that tap into the WordPress core for instructions. For example, the HTML title tag of a
WordPress site may hold the bloginfo() template tag that requests the site title, site
tagline, and other site information set by the template tag parameters. Using this in the
title HTML tag allows the Theme to be used on multiple sites and the information
displayed will change easily with each site.

Other template tags are more sophisticated, generating post content, queries, and site
data.

• Related articles: Stepping Into Template Tags, Anatomy of a Template Tag, How to
Pass Tag Parameters, Include Tags, Conditional Tags, Function Reference, Templates

Term
In WordPress, a is a classification, group or subset of a Taxonomy, where the latter
can be a Category, Tag or Custom Taxonomy. By default, terms have a title, a slug and a
description. Hierarchical taxonomies like categories can define a parent term.

• Related articles: Taxonomies, the_terms()

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Text editor
A is a program which edits files in plain text format, as compared to binary
format. Using a non-text based word processing program (e.g. using Microsoft Word to
edit PHP scripts) can cause major problems in your code. This is because non-text based
word processing programs insert extra formatting into text files, and can corrupt the files
when they need to be interpreted by the interpreter. An editor like Notepad does not
insert any extra formatting.

Some examples of file formats which need to be edited as plain text:

• HTML documents
• PHP scripts
• Perl scripts
• Rich Text Format documents
• JavaScript scripts

For our recommended Text Editors, please see Editing Files.

Some examples of non-plain text formats that require special software for editing:

• Microsoft Word documents

• Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
• Images, such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF

Some examples of software which can edit text, but which are regarded as basic
text editors and for use on WordPress files:

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Adobe Photoshop

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• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Dreamweaver

Theme
A Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical front-end
interface with an underlying unifying design for a site. A WordPress Theme modifies the
way the site is displayed and designed, without modifying the underlying core
programming of WordPress. While some associate a WordPress Theme with “skinning”
your site with a design, a WordPress Theme contains programming code that influences
the design, changing it with each generated page view based upon the programming with
PHP, WordPress template tags, WordPress conditional tags, and CSS.

• Related articles: Theme Development, Using Themes

Theme Blocks
Blocks that accomplish everything possible in traditional templates using template tags
(ex: Post Author Block). A full list can be found here.

TinyMCE
TinyMCE is a web-based JavaScript WYSIWYG �What You See Is What You Get) editor.

Toolbar
The is an area of the screen just above that site that lists useful admininstration
screen links such as add a new post or edit your profile. The Toolbar was added in

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Version 3.1 as Admin Bar and in Version 3.3 it was replaced by the Toolbar. The toolbar
can be turned on/off from the User Profile Screen.

• Related articles: Toolbar

• See also: Admin Bar, Your Profile Screen

Toolbar (in FSE)

A set of button controls. In the context of a block, usually referring to the toolbar of block
controls shown above the selected block.

Trackback
Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what
he had written on his blog, even if you don’t have an explicit link to his article. This
improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit
for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With
pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of
acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a
textbook.

• See also: Pingback

• Related articles: Introduction to Blogging: Trackbacks

Transient
A is temporal data identified by a custom name, stored in the web server
database or memory for fast access. This temporal nature and use of fast memory
caching is their primary distinction from Options.

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• Related articles: Transients API, Options API

Unicode
A widely supported and preferred character encoding system.

For a computer to display letters (or any text characters), it needs to enumerate them –
create an index of characters it knows how to display. These indexes are known as
character sets. This is invaluable for users hosting WordPress in a non-English language.

The most widely used collections of these character sets are the iso-8859 with
iso-8859�1 and iso-8859�15 (which contains the euro sign) being the most common; they
are also known as Latin1 and Latin9. These character sets use 8 bits (a single byte) for
each character, allowing for 255 different characters �256, counting null). However, when
considering that Latin-based languages aren’t the only ones in the world (think Japanese
or Hebrew), 255 characters aren’t nearly enough.

There is a wide index of characters known as Unicode. Unicode has so many characters
that sometimes more than 16 bits �2 bytes!� are required to represent them. Furthermore,
the first 127 characters of Unicode are the same as the first 127 of the most widely used
character set – iso-8859�1. For this purpose, UTF, the Unicode Translation Format, was
created. UTF uses different numbers of bits for characters, and allows for the entire range
of Unicode to be used. What you should probably know is:

• UTF�8 is an 8-bit-minimum type of UTF. There are also UTF�16 and UTF�32.
• If your document is in a Latin-based encoding, you probably don’t need to change
anything about it for it to be UTF.
• A single UTF document can be in various languages with no need to switch encodings
halfway through.
• External links: Joel Spolsky on Unicode

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Unix
, or , is a computer operating system developed at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories
starting back in 1969. Initially designed with the objective of creating an OS written in a
high level language rather than assembly, a majority of web servers currently run on
different “flavors” of this high-performance OS, or on Linux, developed as a Unix-like
operating system.

• See also: UNIX Shell Skills, Mac OS X

Unix Time
, or a , is a method of tracking time by determining the approximate
number of seconds from a particular event. That event is called an Epoch. Since this time
format is only off by a few seconds each century, it is usually considered good enough for
most applications.

Unix time is (currently) a ten digit number, and looks like this: 1229362315. WordPress
often uses a Unix timestamp internally to track time. The human readable times and dates
you see are converted from Unix Time or from a MySQL/MariaDB DATETIME field.

• External Links: Unix Time at Wikipedia, DATETIME, MariaDB DATETIME

URL
An address of a specific Web site or file on the Internet.

http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/reports/index.html

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UTC
(“Universal Time, Coordinated”) is the basis of international time standards from
which time zones around the world are calculated. For most purposes it is the same as
the older GMT standard.

• External link: UTC �Wikipedia)

Web server
A is a computer containing software for, and connected to infrastructure for,
hosting, or serving, web sites written in HTML. The most common web server software on
the internet is Apache, which is frequently used in conjunction with PHP, Perl, and other
scripting languages.

It is possible to create one’s own web server, hosted on any speed of internet connection,
but many people choose to purchase packages from hosting providers, who have the
capacity and facilities to provide adequate bandwidth, uptime, hardware, and
maintenance for frequently-visited web sites.

• Related articles: Hosting WordPress

Widget
In WordPress a is a self-contained area of a web page that performs a specific
function, or the code that generates such a self-contained area. For example, WordPress
has a built-in widget that displays a list of pages in a weblog’s sidebar, and it has another
built-in widget that displays a list of recent comments in the Dashboard. Plugins and
themes can provide additional widgets.

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• Related articles: WordPress Widgets, Widgets API, Dashboard Widgets API

Widget Area
Furthermore, a “Widget Area” is a pre-defined location, in the code of your WordPress
Theme, that allows users to place Widgets into.

XFN
The XHTML Friends Network. A decentralised project to have inter-blog links that
represent relationships between bloggers. XFN links resemble <a
href="http://www.photomatt.net/" rel="friend met">Photo Matt</a>.

XHTML
, or , is the successor to HTML as the
W3C standard language with which all web pages are created. It is often used in
conjunction with CSS and JavaScript.

WordPress strives to conform to the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard.

• External links: XHTML 1.0 Specification �Second Edition), XHTML 1.1 Specification

XML
, or , is written in Standard Generalized Markup
Language �SGML� and essentially allows you to define your own markup language. XML is
extremely useful in describing, sharing, and transmitting data across the Internet.
Typically used in conjunction with HTML, XML defines data and HTML displays that data.

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• External links: Extensible Markup Language �XML� Resources at W3C org XML 4.0
FAQ, Overview of SGML Resources at W3C org

XML-RPC
is . A Remote Procedure
Call �RPC� allows you to call (or request) another application and expect that application
to honor the request (answer the call). So, allows a user (or developer) to send
a request, formatted in XML, to an external application.

• Related articles: XML�RPC Support

• External links: Dave Winer’s XML�RPC for Newbies, XML�RPC Home Page, Apache
XML�RPC, XML�RPC for PHP Homepage, XML�RPC at Wikipedia

More Resources
More glossaries with collection of blogging terms, acronyms and abbreviations.

• Giant Blogging Terms Glossary

• Blogging Terms at Wikipedia
• External WordPress glossary with additional terms

Categories:

• WordPress Help
• Troubleshooting
• Getting Started
• Advanced Topics
• UI Link

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