Terms
Archive Pages – Generally speaking, an archive page is page that presents several posts or pages that are organized in the same category. For instance, if you visit a blog and click on a Web Design category link, you are taken to an archive page that shows only posts from that particular category. Archive pages usually display just headlines and summaries (or excerpts) of each of the posts in that category, with links to view the entire, single post. You can set a limit to how many posts show up on the archive page, and you can paginate them to show for example 10 posts per page for dozens of pages. This is kind of like how Google search results pages work.
Block Patterns – Block patterns are reusable snippets of code that are used as a starting point for layouts and designs that are meant to have their content updated. They’re used to quickly and consistently copy design and layout code from one area of your site to another. Unlike their related reusable blocks, they are not centrally edited in one place, and once they are added to a page, any changes in the WordPress dashboard – with the exception of style edits – will not apply to the previously placed blocks.
Cache – A cache (pronounced cash) is a repository of temporary files that are used to speed up the load times of a website. There’s a cache in a variety of places and on all sorts of devices and software. Caches speed up a user experience by saving previously downloaded files in more readily accessible location – such as on your local computer – so you don’t need to re-download images your browser has already fetched.
Cookies – Cookies are small files of information that a web server generates and sends to a web browser. Web browsers store the cookies they receive for a predetermined period of time, or for the length of a user’s session on a website. They attach the relevant cookies to any future requests the user makes of the web server.
Cookies help inform websites about the user, enabling the websites to personalize the user experience. For example, ecommerce websites use cookies to know what merchandise users have placed in their shopping carts. In addition, some cookies are necessary for security purposes, such as authentication cookies (see below).
Categories – Posts (not pages) are usually associated with Categories, you can create a category and assign your post to it when creating a new post. That category is then available as an option on all posts moving forward. For example, a Stride blog post can be added to the ‘Graphic Design’ category so that if someone is interested in reading more about Graphic Design, they could click the Category “Graphic Design” (which can be shown on the individual post) and view only blog posts categorized as Graphic Design.
Custom Post Types – Custom Post Types are just like blog posts, except they are not included in the typical “Blog.” They’re manually created depending on the client/project and they get their own link in the Dashboard navigation so you can manage them independent of pages and posts, which are in every WordPress installation by default. ‘Projects’ is a typical custom post type that we create.
Custom Fields – The real power of custom post types comes when you assign custom fields to the post type. For example, a Projects post type will have custom fields like Project Name, Project Cost, Architect, Project Photo Gallery, Project Completion Date, etc. that allows clients to easily add content without needing to “design” a new page for each project. The layout and display of the custom information added through custom fields is controlled by a template that the developer designs and builds. Custom fields show up when you create a new project and act as a series of questions that a user will need to answer, to fill out the content on a Project page for example.
Excerpt – An excerpt is a short summary of a page most often used as teaser text next to an image (usually the ‘Featured Image’ on an overview page. Excerpts are often automatically created by the first sentence of text on the page but can be overriden if the page/post has an excerpt field where you can add custom text. On WordPress websites the excerpt field allows users to manually determine the content that the user sees when a page or post is promoted on other pages of the site.
Filtering – Filtering is used to sort though posts based on different meta data. For instance, you could filter the Stride blog to view only Graphic Design posts written by Terri. Technically that would be 3 different filters, Post type = Post, Author = Terri, and Category = Graphic Design. You can filter by just about any type of Meta Data so it’s a pretty powerful tool when building websites.
A common way we use filtering is on our Project pages when there is a top bar that allows you to filter different projects by project type. By default, the main Project page is an Archive Page that contains limited info and a picture of all published Projects. The filter bar allows you to filter by a certain category like residential projects. We use technology to show the filtering happen live on screen, but it’s the same idea as jumping to a page that shows Projects from a certain category like “Residential”.
Landing Page – A Landing page in the WordPress world is a page that is designed for online marketing (AdWords) campaigns to point to. Generally they will be minimalist with only one or a few trackable links for visitors to use. These pages are generally used to measure the success/conversion of a message in an adwords campaign.
Meta Data – Meta data is secondary information about a post contained within a database, Meta Data can include post date, author, modified date, categories, tags, custom fields etc. You can hide or display most meta data on any post, typically we hide most of it, but sometimes we include author and post date.
Overview page – An overview page isn’t necessarily a WordPress term, it’s just something that loosely defines a page that leads into several other child pages. As an example a Services overview page would typically be populated with featured images and excerpt from all of the children pages. This page is considered a Services overview page.
Post – In its most basic definition a post on a WordPress website is a single, chronologically ordered blog post. BUT behind the scenes, all things we typically think of as pages or posts are technically different kinds of posts including pages, portfolio items, media, our-staff/people pages etc. ‘Posts’ are a default link in the WordPress dashboard, and any information added there will typically show up in a websites Blog.
Page – Pages are posts that are not included in the “Blog” and can best be thought of as static, non-ordered, permanent information. They are not usually associated with categories, although they can be. They have their own link in the navigation of the admin dashboard called ‘Pages’.
Parent/Child Relationship – Some pages live directly in the top navigation of a site. These pages are called parent pages. A typical example of a parent page is the ‘About’ page (https://yourdomain.com/about/). When an ‘About’ page has a child page titled ‘Our People’ the address for that page would be: https://yourdomain.com/about/our-people. While assigning parent/child relationships isn’t required, there are several benefits to using them such as longer, more keyword-rich urls, better organization of posts and pages in the WordPress backend, easier for site users to determine where they are on the site by looking at the url, etc. Parent/Child relationships can also be used for categories or custom taxonomies as well, for instance a Web category may have a css or hosting sub-category. This allows a page or post to be categorized as both a ‘Web’ related post and ‘css’ post at the same time.
Reusable Blocks – Reusable blocks are a handy feature introduced with the new block editor in WordPress 5.0. They are snippets of code (or blocks) that can be saved and reused throughout a site while being editable in one place. Virtually any block on your website can easily be turned into a reusable block. When a reusable block is edited all instances of that block will be synchonized sitewide. For more information or to learn how to create reusable blocks visit WordPress.orgs Did you know about reusable blocks article.
Taxonomies / Custom Taxonomies – Categories and Tags are also called Taxonomies in the world of WordPress. You can create a custom category and assign it to the post type, and have it only apply to that particular post type. For instance, we often create a Custom Taxonomy (Custom Category) called “Project Type” that gets associated with Projects and allows us to organize Projects into different Project Types (i.e. Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Featured, etc.). We can then use this display subsets of Projects in different ways and places throughout the site. For example, “Featured” projects can be displayed on the homepage. Tags work a lot like categories but are considered less rigid. The best analogy I can think of is Categories work like folders for posts, and tags are more like assigning keywords to posts.
Wireframes – Website wireframes act as a blueprint for designers, developers, and content managers to communicate the structure of the website you’re building. Wireframes are low-fidelity and contain few colors and design elements to allow for the focus to be on the structure of the page rather than content, design or other details. They are meant to encourage discussion, particularly regarding ease-of-use, so don’t be afraid to offer criticism of wireframes, their main purpose is to give stakeholders the ability to make suggestions and edits before layering on the complexities of code and design.
