When undertaking a WordPress website build, it can be helpful to use a shared WordPress lexicon when communicating with your client or with your developer, depending on which side of the equation you are on. Here’s our list of basic WordPress vocabulary:
- Back Office or BO WordPress’s administrative interface where you can create content, configure plugins and widgets, customise menus and etc.
- Frontend The website from the user’s point of view, or what your site’s visitors see (as opposed to the BO).
- Theme The collection of PHP/HTML/CSS templates that are used to govern the look and feel of a WordPress website.
- Template An individual section of a theme with its own unique layout and styling; there may be many templates in one theme, for instance one for the home page, one for the about page, one for blog posts and so on.
- Post WordPress allows creation of two main types of content, Posts and Pages. Posts are similar to traditional newspaper articles and represent pieces of topical content on a particular subject. Posts are listed in a feed of excerpts. Clicking on an excerpt opens an individual Post. Posts may be organised into Categories and be associated with Tags.
- Page Sometimes referred to as ‘static content’, Pages are designed to contain informative content that does not change on a regular basis, for instance information about a product or service. Pages represent persistent content that is often accessible from a website’s main navigation, e.g. an about page would be implemented as a WordPress Page.
- Category Categories and Sub Categories are used to organise Posts into subject areas. Categories may be used with custom menus to provide easy access to particular feeds of content from a site’s main navigation. They are also useful for internal navigation from within a website’s blog feed.
- Archive or Feed A listing of excerpts for a Category, date, search result or similar.
- Excerpt An optional thumbnail plus the beginning of a post that is included in a feed. The thumbnail is based on the Featured Image that is set in the WordPress Back Office when creating a Post. The number of characters from the taken from beginning of the Post that is included in excerpts is also configurable through the Back Office.