Part two in our series of 'articles' examining the  terminology and jargon that a novice Joomla user is going to have to come to terms with. As with all articles in this series we have broken the terms down into two groups: those terms that are Joomla specific and those more general IT terms that our new user is likely to have to come to terms with.

Joomla Jargon

Back-end (Administrator Back-end)

'Back end' refers to the Administrator's Control Panel, where Managers, Administrators, or Super Administrators log in to manage all aspects of their web site, including both features and content. The terms 'front end' and 'back end' never cease to cause amusement and can even jeopardise a project when talking with prospective clients - it can be advantageous to use alternative language 'public site' and 'admin interface' for example. See also: Front-end (Site Front-end).

Banners

Joomla! core Component (built-in component distributed as part of Joomla) which allows you to display and manage banner adverts for your web site. In the Administrator Back-end, you can set up banners, input and associate clients with their specific banners, and specify impressions as a number or unlimited. The number of impressions seen and clicks are recorded and displayed in the Back-end under Components/Banners/Manage Banners. Banners are displayed on the Site (Front-end) using the banners module.

Blog Format

Style of content presentation within Joomla!, displaying some or all Content Items in a certain section or category. The title is shown along with the introductory text, with a Read More link displayed following the introductory text. Often a site's front page or its 'news' page is written in Blog style.

Not Directly Joomla Related

Blog

Short for web log - a blog is a rolling journal similar to a newspaper or magazine columnist where the author writes about their ad hoc happenings, thoughts and feelings including commentary on other news that they have read. Blogging (the act of writing a blog) has become popular as it has allowed easy entry to web publishing through simplified interfaces. In turn this has allowed people to concentrate on publishing and to 'forget' about managing their site.

Browser

Software program (run on your computer) used to view and interact with various types of Internet resources available on the World Wide Web. Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, and Safari are three common examples. Internet Explorer is evil - please do NOT use it - ever.