It’s difficult to carry on a conversation if you’re not speaking the same language – doable, but difficult. Talking about your website is no exception to this rule.

“Put the thingy beside the doohicky and make them both that same shade of green of those pants I like,” doesn’t exactly bring enough clarity to the request to result in meaningful action.

Computer geeks have developed a language all their own; web geeks have their own dialect of that language. These terms are interesting, fun, and helpful. Here are a few to get you started in the web world:

• Blog – a kind of online journal describing, in somewhat personal terms, the thoughts, feelings, observations, and events effecting the life or the writer
• Post – one blog entry, complete in and of itself while fitting into an ongoing series – composed of written content and images
• Page – a somewhat static expression around a single subject, such as About Us
• Category – a way to group blog posts around themes in order to make them easier to access
• Comment – a reader’s response to a post or, in some cases, a page, which becomes part of the display of a page or post
• Plugin – a discrete bit of software, easily added, which provides specific additional functionality
• Theme – a somewhat interchangeable skin that gives a website a look and feel out of the box, and which can be customized or exchanged
• Content – the most important aspect of any website – the words
• Site Metrics – statistics about site visits, including how visitors arrived at a website, some information about their computer, and what they did while they were engaged with a particular website
• SEO – search engine optimization – methods to make websites findable by search engines, hopefully moving them to the top of particular relevant word searches
• Banner – prime real estate on a web page at or near the top, usually containing an image, logo, tag line, and perhaps advertisements
• Navigation – the way a viewer moves through the pages and posts on a website, finding what they’re looking for via clearly labeled links
• Architecture – how the pages, posts, sidebars, footers, banner, and links are organized on the website to facilitate the kind of interaction that the site owner desires viewers to experience