It is iwith.org’s consulting programme. We use it to answer technological queries, discuss internet-related topics and offer useful information to organisations and internet users about new technologies

It is iwith.org’s internet platform. We use it we bring internet services such as websites, email, and volunteer and virtual community management closer to organisations.

It is iwith.org’s education programme. It is used for training in New Technologies and helps NGOs offer their own training online.

High speed information transfer technology used for Internet connections.

Software that detects unsolicited emails and deletes them.

Software that detects, and may eliminate, computer viruses that could have infected a hard drive or disc.

Document storage. It can be an image or text.
It can be allocated a name to which the computer will add an extension indicating the type of information stored or the program with which it was created. This extension is separated from the name by a dot.

File that comes with an email. It is used to send images, sounds, programs and other larger files.

Indicates the amount of data that can be transferred in a fixed amount of time. The larger the bandwidth, the faster the connection.

Breadcrumbs is a navigation tool consisting of a series of hierarchal links. Breadcrumbs represent the navigation route and allow users to:

Know which part of the web they find themselves in
Return to principal sections easily

Breadcrumbs are presented in the following order:
Homepage > Webmastering > Navigation

Breadcrumbs include the following elements:
Links separated by the character “>” which symbolizes the idea of a hierarchy.
The last link appears in bold and cannot by clicked upon. This link represents the page that the visitor is currently viewing.

A bug is an error or defect in software or hardware that causes a program to function incorrectly. Usually, bugs are caused by software conflicts, particularly when applications attempt to function in tandem.

In the navigation bar, the cache refers to the last version of the page that has been saved in a computer’s memory. It is used so that the same page can be loaded quicker during the next visit as well as allowing for an offline version of the same page.

Challenge-response test, used in computing to determine whether the user is a human or not. That way you prevent HTML bots from submitting unwanted messages. Usually the user has to type some letters or characters displayed in a box, as you can see in the figure below.

Are determined based on the top level domain of the requesting site. This is somewhat questionable however, as there is no longer strong enforcement of domains as there was in the past. A .COM domain may reside in the US, or somewhere else. An .IL domain may actually be in Isreal, however it may also be located in the US or elsewhere. The most common domains seen are .COM (US Commercial), .NET (Network), .ORG (Non-profit Organization) and .EDU (Educational). A large percentage may also be shown as Unresolved/Unknown, as a fairly large percentage of dialup and other customer access points do not resolve to a name and are left as an IP address.

Cascading Style Sheets is a simple mechanism that demonstrates how a document will be displayed onscreen, how it is going to print, or how information obtained from powerpoint slides will be displayed in a document. This style demonstration offers the developers total control over the style and format of their documents.

CSS is used to style HTML and XML documents and separates the content of the presentation. The Styles define the way in which HTML and XML are displayed. CSS allows Web developers the ability to control the style and format of multiple Web pages at the same time. All changes are marked so that an element in CSS will affect all the linked pages to that particular CSS in which the element appears.

The digital divide is defined as the gap that exists between those that use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on a daily basis (communities, states, countries,…) and those who do not have access to the technology, and those that do have access and do not know how to use it.

See digital divide

Unique email account identifier; e.g. info@22barcelona.com.

Are those pages that were the first requested in a visit (Entry), and the last requested (Exit). These pages are calculated using the Visits logic above. When a visit is first triggered, the requested page is counted as an Entry page, and whatever the last requested URL was, is counted as an Exit page.

An Extranet is an Intranet which extends beyond the physical limits of an organisation or entity which has a website. The Extranet allows users outside of the organisation but who may be linked to it according to selected requirements to access information which is a little more exclusive than the information general internet users would have access to.

On iwith.org’s Ab·core platform the extranet can be accessed by going to user configuration ->preferences. The system will show you a list of six options. Answer Yes to the first question, "Allow external users", if you wish to activate the extranet

Feedburner is a company based in Chicago that provides distribution services in communication as well as for blog and RSS readers. Their tools are internet based and include a blog and RSS reader publicity network, help in promotion, direction and help in raising money for web content as well as ensuring that the feed content is more accessible and manageable for users.
Feedburner is the most widely used tool, as well as the only one, to measure the number of subscribers to a feed.

Files represent the total number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user. Not all hits will send data, such as 404-Not Found requests and requests for pages that are already in the browsers cache.

FLV (Flash Video) is an archive format used to transmit video over the internet using Adobe Flash Player (previously known as Macromedia Flash Player) versions 6, 7, 8 or 9. The most common sites that use FLV are YouTube, Google Video, Reuters.com, Yahoo! Video and MySpace.

Free software is a debate concerning the freedom for users to execute, copy, distribute, study, change and improve software. More precisely, it refers to four types of rights for software users:

The freedom to execute a program, for whatever purpose.
The freedom to study how a program works and use it for one’s own needs. Access to the source code is required.
The freedom to distribute copies that will help the next user.
The liberty to improve the program and publish those improvements, as well as modifications in general, so that the entire community benefits. Access to the source code is required.

Abstraction layer (Hardware Abstraction Layer or HAL) is a set of hardware functionalities that allow programmers access in an easy and clear way the system database. It is, therefore, very critical, as most of the applications use accesses to the database to show the information. The HAL works as an interface device between the physical hardware and the software, providing a solid hardware platform to run the applications.

Hits epresent the total number of requests made to the server during the given time period (month, day, hour etc..).

Service for renting web space on a specific computer or server to publish websites on the Internet.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT), can be used to study, develop, implement, store and distribute information through the use of hardware and software as an information system.

Information technology is also referred to with the acronym ICT and refers to the use of IT resources to store, process and distribute all types of information and educational training processes.

A KByte (KB) is 1024 bytes (1 Kilobyte). Used to show the amount of data that was transfered between the server and the remote machine, based on the data found in the server log.

Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. KPI are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. They will differ depending on the organization.

Only available if that information is contained in the server logs.

Pages are those URLs that would be considered the actual page being requested, and not all of the individual items that make it up (such as graphics and audio clips). Some people call this metric page views or page impressions, and defaults to any URL that has an extension of .htm, .html or .cgi.

URLs that lead a user to your site or caused the browser to request something from your server. The vast majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files. If one of your HTML pages contains links to 10 graphic images, then each request for the HTML page will produce 10 more hits with the referrer specified as the URL of your own HTML page.

Response Codes are defined as part of the HTTP/1.1 protocol (RFC 2068; See Chapter 10). These codes are generated by the web server and indicate the completion status of each request made to it.

RSS is a format used for the syndication of web page content. The abbreviation means a Really Simple Syndication. In Spanish, to syndicate (sindicar) literally means syndicate, to form part of a syndicate. In English it has another meaning: “to simultaneously publish articles in different media through the same source¨.

Screencast or screencasting is a technique that is used to make digital video recordings of what is displayed on the computer screen. It captures an image of the screen (in it’s entirety or only a part) or what appears on the screen in a given time. Generally, audio accompanies the image.

Scripts are a collection of instructions generally found in a text archive that should be interpreted line by line in real time for their proper execution. They can be distinguished from other programs and can be converted to a binary archive for reading. The text archive of script in the case of Ab.core is not modified by the editor and is inalterable.

Search strings are obtained from examining the referrer string and looking for known patterns from various search engines. The search engines and the patterns to look for can be specified by the user within a configuration file. The default will catch most of the major ones.

A Site is a remote machine that makes requests to your server, and is based on the remote machines IP Address/Hostname.

It is the number of unique IP addresses/hostnames that made requests to the server. Care should be taken when using this metric for anything other than that. Many users can appear to come from a single site, and they can also appear to come from many IP addresses so it should be used simply as a rough gauge as to the number of visitors to your server.

Snippet is a programming term for a small region of re-usable source code, machine code or text. Ordinarily, these are formally-defined operative units to incorporate into larger programming modules. Snippets are often used to clarify the meaning of an otherwise "cluttered" function, or to minimize the use of repeated code that is common to other functions.

Also known as junk email or sms messages, these are unsolicited messages, typically advertising, sent in bulk which are in some way detrimental to the recipient.

In addition to email spam, there can also be spam in Usenet news, search engines, wikis, forums, blogs, popups and any type of image or text on the web. Junk mail can also target mobile phones (through text messages) and instant messaging systems, for example Outlook, Lotus Notes etc.

Tag clouds are a visual representation of the tags or keywords used on a website. Generally, this list of words is ordered alphabetically; the most frequently used tags are shown with a larger font than the others.

By looking at the difference between hits and files, you can get a rough indication of repeat visitors, as the greater the difference between the two, the more people are requesting pages they already have cached (have viewed already).

Modify content to maintain its validity and ensure that it is up to date.

Uniform Resource Locator. All requests made to a web server need to request something. A URL is that something, and represents an object somewhere on your server, that is accessable to the remote user, or results in an error (ie: 404 - Not found). URLs can be of any type (HTML, Audio, Graphics, etc...).

User agents are a fancy name for browsers. Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, etc.. are all User Agents, and each reports itself in a unique way to your server. Keep in mind however, that many browsers allow the user to change it's reported name, so you might see some obvious fake names in the listing.

Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats. Since only pages will trigger a visit, remotes sites that link to graphic and other non- page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.

Web 2.0 is the transition from traditional applications towards applications which operate via the web focused on the end user. These are applications which encourage collaboration and services which replace desktop applications. In simple terms, the web user or reader is an active participant, generating content or designing their own web.

And dependency on the computer is a thing of the past: your bookmarks and the things you normally do on the computer or internet, such as drafting a text, tweaking your photos etc., you can do directly online and they can even be stored virtually. This way there is no need to install programs such as Office or Photoshop, as your tools are available freely and openly on the web.

A name that identifies a website and is entered into the Internet browser in order to access it, for example: www.districtedigital.org. If the web address is entered into the browser, the computer will connect to the server or computer at that address that hosts the website.

WorkFlow refers to a tool which facilitates workflow, assigning various tasks to different members of the system, and tracking each action.