Website Design Terminology for Dynamic Publishing Templates

Brochure theme page elements

Our brochure website offer, ‘recession special’ utilized a robust blog publishing platform, WordPress. This is an opensource web application for managing a dynamic website. During the design stage of creating a website we review compositions with our clients. We try not to stuff the conversations with jargon that the buyer doesn’t understand, but unfortunately we need use some fancy talk when communicating about the design elements of a web page is a template for dynamic content. The terms below are specific to the process of designing and managing a website using WordPress.

Static content

Web page content that does not change with database updates, or portions of a page that are fixed in a template.

Dynamic content

Web page content that is rendered within a template; portions of the page layout accept data processed by a server-side script.

Header

Top of page, holds branding and logo content, sometimes includes search bar and contact information. Header ends with top navigation bar listing pages and hover (on mouse over) dropdowns.

Featured

Area of page to highlight content or catch visitor attention. (1)

Leader

Area of page just above main content used for emphasis, e.g. unique selling proposition. (4)

Sidebar

Secondary navigation area, may contain search box, category links, page links, archive dropdown, external links, RSS links, etc. (8)

Carousel

Functionality where content (e.g. images) can be stepped through with user controls < > and may run automatically. (2)

Widget

Block of content that can utilize various features included with WordPress like recent posts, recent comments, calendar of blog posts, search box, or you may use multiple text blocks editable in the control panel. (10)

Footer

End of page, includes copyright text, option for widget areas. (10)

WordPress

Dynamic publishing tool for managing website content using a web browser. The platform is opensource and widely used by leading news agencies and corporations. Has a user friendly interface for publishing text and media. Also works great to optimize a website for search engines with plugins.

Posts

Blog articles organized in categories, also you may tag the post with text that becomes a text base taxonomy allowing readers to find similar topics without browsing through categories. (9)

Sticky Post

Article that regardless of date published or ordering logic, appears first on the main content area of a home/ category page. (7)

Pages

Single subject pages like: about us, contact us.

Control panel

Back-end area of website for managing content on the WordPress publishing platform using a database.

Plugin

Extends functionality of the WordPress platform. (Tools for Google sitemaps and Search Engine Optimization, etc.)