Reference & Manual > Glossary > W

W3C
World Wide Web Consortium. An international industry consortium that develops standards for the world wide web.

WAP
WAP is short for the Wireless Application Protocol, a secure specification that allows users with WAP-enabled wireless devices such as cellular phones and pagers to send and receive email via these wireless devices. Wireless email is perfect for those who are always on the go, and it makes doing business outside the office easier. Not all email services are WAP enabled. Halfprice Hosting's email solution is WAP enabled.

WAV
An audio file format. Very accurate, but offers no compression, thus resulting in very large files.

WAIS
(Wide Area Information Servers) -- A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities of information, and then making those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet . A prominent feature of WAIS is that the search results are ranked (scored) according to how relevant the hits are, and that subsequent searches can find more stuff like that last batch and thus refine the search process.

WAN
(Wide Area Network) -- Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or campus.

Web Console
WebConsole is a Web-based, enterprise network management solution. It allows network administrators to securely access servers, manage a heterogeneous LAN/WAN, configure, troubleshoot, monitor, and generate security reports. In addition, when using WebConsole, help desk personnel may administer passwords, set time restrictions, create incident reports, add and delete users, reset user accounts, and give printer access. All that is required is a Web browser, access rights and a connection to the INTERNET or intranet.

Web-based Email
WebMail is a multi-featured, customizable, browser-independent email system. Some of WebMail's many features include: contact list, daily schedule, to do list, spell checker and web bookmarks.

Web Hosting
The business of providing the storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve files for a website.

Web Hosting Control Panel
A web interface offered by hosting companies so customers can administer their account.

Web Mail
Email that is accessed via a web browser.

Webmaster
A person responsible for the maintenance of a particular website.

Web Server
A computer that stores web pages and delivers them on request to the web browsers of client computers.

Web Search Engine Directories
Search engines crawl the web looking for keywords. They act as the Internets evolving list of databases that are used to find sites that pertain to information specified by the user. Alta visa, Google, Hot Bot, and C4 are just a few of the many search engines that exist on the WWW.

Web Space
The amount of space reserved for your website on a server. Typical 10 to 20 page websites are about 2-3 Megs. Larger website like e-commerce stores are much larger in size.

Web Standards
Authoring web content to the specifications recommended by the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) is often referred to as a 'web standards' approach.

As the W3C specifications are developed independent of corporate interests, they provide a standard reference point for both browser developers and web content authors. If both developers and authors correctly implement the specifications, then a webpage will look and function consistently, across all browsers.

Web Stats
Web Stats is a web server log file analysis program. It produces usage statistics from your website's server logs. The statistical results are presented in both columnar and graphical format. Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser) and country.

Web Tv
WebTV is an alternative to accessing the internet through a personal computer. Through the proprietary WebTV browser users can access email and website and the "value-added" interactive dimension promised by digital television.

As for the quality of interaction; the user must use a modified remote control to select options and a wireless keyboard for typing, television screens have not been designed with on screen reading in mind and HTML support is equivalent to Internet Explorer 3.

Website
A website is a group of documents and images on a computer that are specially formatted to be accessible on the INTERNET.

Website Checker
The Website Checker function allows you to view the structure of your website, check your pages for broken links, list links pointing to external sites, view your website images, get a run-down of problems sorted by author, locate pages that may be slow to download, show new and old pages, indicate pages that have no title, and show links that are not checked.

Website Promotion Wizard
The Website Promotion Wizard allows you to promote your site by automatically sending promotion material to the top search engines.

Website Security
Website Security is an application that restricts access to certain areas within the end user¡¯s website. These areas are protected by Hostname, IP address, or username and password. A hostname is a unique name that would identify a computer through a network, and is also known as site name. An IP address is abbreviated for Internet Protocol, which identifies the sender and receiver of information across the Internet.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
Wireless Application Protocol is the connection standard for delivering information to wireless devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.

Wireless Markup Language (WML)
Wireless Markup Language is the syntax used to describe information to be displayed on WAP devices (such as mobile phones and PDAs).

Whois
An Internet utility that returns information about a domain name or IP address. For example, if you enter a domain name such as Adovis.com, WHOIS will return the name and address of the domain's owner.

Windows
A popular operating system.

Windows Socket
(WinSock). Windows Sockets is a standard way for Windows-based programs to work with TCP/IP. You can use WinSock if you use SLIP to connect to the Internet.

Wizards
A utility within an application that helps you use the application to perform a particular task. For example, a wizard might walk you through the setup of an account or help you create a new webpage.

World Wide Web
(World Wide Web) -- Two meanings - First, loosely used: the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP, telnet, USENET, WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files, etc. to be mixed together.

Worms
A worm is very similar to a VIRUS in that it is also replicating software. The difference between a virus and a worm is that a worm replicates itself independent of a carrier object. It does not need to attach itself to a file or a document to spread or execute. In other words, if you have a worm on a disk, as soon as you put the disk in your computer, the worm begins. A virus would only start when you opened the infected file on the disk.