WordPress explained

Knowledge
base

143 terms about WordPress, websites and online business, explained in plain English from A to Z.

Term of the day

WordPress

Pick a random term from the knowledge base and learn something new in under a minute.

Read the full explanation

From A to Z

Look up a term

Search the list or jump to a letter. Open a term for the short answer, or read the full explanation.

A11 terms

Affiliate Marketing is promoting someone else's product or services in exchange for a commission. So you don't have your own product or service, but you...

Read the full explanation

Do you want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing and start making money with it? In this guide we will explore: 1. What Affiliate Marketing is 2. How...

Read the full explanation

An AI assistant is a software tool powered by artificial intelligence that helps you accomplish tasks through natural conversation. You talk to it (or...

Read the full explanation

AI automation is the use of artificial intelligence to perform repetitive or complex tasks automatically — without constant human involvement. It goes...

Read the full explanation

An AI chatbot is a software program that uses artificial intelligence to have conversations with users in natural language. Unlike old-school rule-based...

Read the full explanation

AI content generation is the use of artificial intelligence tools to automatically create written content — blog posts, product descriptions, social media...

Read the full explanation

AI image generation is the use of artificial intelligence to create images from text descriptions (called prompts). You type something like a cozy coffee...

Read the full explanation

An AI plugin for WordPress is a plugin that integrates artificial intelligence features directly into your WordPress site or dashboard. These plugins...

Read the full explanation

AI SEO refers to using artificial intelligence tools to improve your website's search engine rankings — faster and smarter than doing it all manually. AI...

Read the full explanation

An AI website builder is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to help you create a website — either fully automatically or with AI-assisted design and...

Read the full explanation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is technology that enables computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence — things like understanding...

Read the full explanation

B5 terms

Backlinks Backlinks, also known as inbound links or external links, are links from one website to a page on another website. In terms of SEO, backlinks...

Read the full explanation

Blog monetization is the process of earning money from your blog. Once you have traffic coming in, there are several ways to turn that audience into...

Read the full explanation

Bounce Rate Optimization

Read the full explanation

C6 terms

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that can hold natural conversations, answer questions, write content, summarize text, generate code,...

Read the full explanation

A child theme is a WordPress theme that inherits all the styling and functionality of a parent theme, but lets you make custom changes safely. Think of it...

Read the full explanation

CMS stands for Content Management System. It's software that lets you create, manage, and publish content on a website without needing to write code for...

Read the full explanation

Computer vision is a field of AI that enables computers to interpret and understand visual information from the world — images, videos, and live camera...

Read the full explanation

cPanel is a web-based control panel that hosting companies use to let you manage your hosting account through a graphical interface. Instead of using...

Read the full explanation

Cross-selling is a sales strategy where you suggest complementary products or services to someone who is already buying something. If a customer buys a...

Read the full explanation

D5 terms

Data analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and making sense of data to make better decisions. For website owners and marketers, it means...

Read the full explanation

Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that uses neural networks with many layers (that's the deep part) to learn patterns from data. It's the...

Read the full explanation

DNS stands for Domain Name System. It's essentially the internet's phone book — it translates human-readable domain names (like yoursite.com) into IP...

Read the full explanation

A domain name is the address people type into their browser to find your website — like yoursite.com. It's the human-friendly version of your site's IP...

Read the full explanation

A drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent to subscribers over time, triggered by specific actions or a set schedule. Instead of sending one...

Read the full explanation

E5 terms

What is E-commerce? An e-commerce company is a term increasingly used in advertisements, videos, and articles, but what is it, and what can you do with...

Read the full explanation

Elementor is the most popular drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress. It lets you design stunning pages visually — no coding needed. With a live...

Read the full explanation

Email marketing is the practice of sending emails to a list of subscribers to build relationships, share content, and promote products or services. It's...

Read the full explanation

An embedding model is a type of AI model that converts text, images, or other data into numerical vectors. These vectors capture meaning in a way...

Read the full explanation

Evergreen content is content that stays relevant and useful for a long time after it's published. Unlike news articles or trend-based posts that go stale...

Read the full explanation

F5 terms

A favicon is the tiny icon that appears in your browser tab next to your website's title. It's usually 16x16 or 32x32 pixels and shows your logo or brand...

Read the full explanation

A featured snippet is the box that appears at the very top of Google search results, showing a direct answer to a search query. It's pulled from a web...

Read the full explanation

Fine-tuning is the process of taking a pre-trained AI model and training it further on a smaller, specific dataset to make it better at a particular task....

Read the full explanation

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's a method for transferring files between your computer and a web server. Web developers and site owners use FTP...

Read the full explanation

A funnel (short for marketing or sales funnel) is the step-by-step journey a person takes from first hearing about you to becoming a paying customer. It's...

Read the full explanation

G5 terms

Generative AI is a category of artificial intelligence that creates new content — text, images, audio, video, code, or even 3D objects — rather than just...

Read the full explanation

Google AdSense is Google's advertising program that lets website owners earn money by displaying ads on their sites. When someone clicks or views an ad on...

Read the full explanation

Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform from Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It shows you who visits your site, where they come...

Read the full explanation

GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It's a type of large language model developed by OpenAI that can generate human-like text, answer...

Read the full explanation

The Gutenberg editor is WordPress's built-in block editor. Since WordPress 5.0, it replaced the old classic editor as the default way to write and design...

Read the full explanation

H5 terms

In AI, a hallucination is when a language model generates text that sounds confident and believable but is factually wrong or completely made up. The...

Read the full explanation

Headless WordPress is a setup where you use WordPress as the backend (for managing content) but completely separate the frontend (what visitors see) from...

Read the full explanation

In WordPress development, a hook is a way to insert custom code into WordPress at specific points without editing core files. Hooks are what make...

Read the full explanation

A hosting provider is a company that stores your website's files on powerful servers and makes them accessible on the internet. Every website needs...

Read the full explanation

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the standard language used to structure content on the web. Every webpage you visit is built with HTML at its...

Read the full explanation

I5 terms

Image optimization is the process of reducing image file sizes without losing noticeable quality, while also making sure images are properly set up for...

Read the full explanation

Impressions in SEO refer to how many times your page appeared in a search result, whether or not someone clicked on it. Each time your link shows up in...

Read the full explanation

Indexing is the process by which search engines like Google discover and add your web pages to their database. When a page is indexed, it can appear in...

Read the full explanation

Influencer marketing is a strategy where brands pay or collaborate with people who have large, engaged audiences online to promote their products or...

Read the full explanation

Internal linking is the practice of linking from one page on your website to another page on the same website. It sounds simple, but it's one of the most...

Read the full explanation

J5 terms

JavaScript is a programming language that runs in the browser and makes websites interactive. While HTML structures content and CSS styles it, JavaScript...

Read the full explanation

Jetpack is a powerful all-in-one plugin for WordPress made by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. It packs a huge range of features into one...

Read the full explanation

jQuery is a popular JavaScript library that makes writing JavaScript faster and easier. Instead of writing long, complex vanilla JavaScript, jQuery lets...

Read the full explanation

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight format for storing and transferring data. It's easy for humans to read and easy for machines to parse....

Read the full explanation

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a way to add structured data to your web pages so search engines can better understand your...

Read the full explanation

K5 terms

Keyword density is the percentage of times a target keyword appears in a piece of content compared to the total word count. If you have a 1000-word...

Read the full explanation

Keyword difficulty is a metric used in SEO tools to estimate how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword. It's usually...

Read the full explanation

Keyword Research Keyword research is a crucial part of SEO and forms the foundation of any successful strategy. It involves investigating which search...

Read the full explanation

Keyword stuffing is the outdated practice of overloading a webpage with keywords in an unnatural way to try to manipulate search engine rankings. It used...

Read the full explanation

The Knowledge Graph is a massive database Google uses to understand real-world entities and their relationships: people, places, businesses, things, and...

Read the full explanation

L5 terms

A landing page is a standalone web page designed with one specific goal: to get visitors to take a single action. That might be signing up for an email...

Read the full explanation

A Large Language Model (LLM) is a type of AI trained on enormous amounts of text data to understand and generate human language. Models like GPT-4,...

Read the full explanation

Lazy loading is a technique that delays loading images and videos until they're actually needed, typically when a user scrolls close to them on the page....

Read the full explanation

A lead magnet is something valuable you offer for free in exchange for someone's email address. It's the foundation of most email list-building...

Read the full explanation

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your site. These incoming links are called backlinks, and they're one of Google's...

Read the full explanation

M5 terms

Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of AI where computers learn from data instead of being explicitly programmed with rules. Rather than telling a computer...

Read the full explanation

A meta description is a short summary of a webpage that appears below the title in search engine results. It doesn't directly affect your ranking, but it...

Read the full explanation

Mobile optimization is the process of making sure your website works great on smartphones and tablets. More than half of all web traffic now comes from...

Read the full explanation

Monetization is the process of turning your website, content, or audience into a source of income. For website builders and bloggers, it's the big goal:...

Read the full explanation

Multimodal AI refers to AI systems that can process and understand multiple types of input, not just text. A multimodal model can work with text, images,...

Read the full explanation

N5 terms

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of AI that focuses on enabling computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language. It's the...

Read the full explanation

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is a branch of artificial intelligence focused on teaching machines to comprehend human language. It's not just about...

Read the full explanation

A neural network is a type of machine learning model loosely inspired by the structure of the human brain. It's made up of layers of interconnected nodes...

Read the full explanation

A niche website is a website focused on a specific, well-defined topic or audience rather than trying to cover everything. Instead of building a general...

Read the full explanation

A nofollow link is a hyperlink with a special HTML attribute (rel="nofollow") that tells search engines not to pass authority or link juice to the linked...

Read the full explanation

O5 terms

Off-page SEO Off-page SEO refers to all activities that take place outside your own website and contribute to improving the visibility and authority of...

Read the full explanation

On-Page SEO On-page SEO refers to all the optimizations you perform on your own pages to make them more discoverable in search engines like Google. It is...

Read the full explanation

OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI gateway that connects your favorite chat apps — like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and iMessage — to powerful AI agents. It...

Read the full explanation

An opt-in form is a form on your website where visitors enter their email address (and sometimes name) to subscribe to your email list or receive a lead...

Read the full explanation

Organic traffic is the visitors who find your website through unpaid search engine results. When someone searches on Google, Bing, or another search...

Read the full explanation

P5 terms

A page builder is a drag-and-drop tool for designing WordPress pages without writing any code. Instead of wrestling with templates or shortcodes, you...

Read the full explanation

Page Speed Page speed, or the load time of a web page, refers to the amount of time it takes for a web page to fully load and display for the user. It is...

Read the full explanation

A permalink is the permanent URL of a post, page, or any content on your WordPress site. It's what people bookmark, share, and search engines index....

Read the full explanation

PHP is a server-side programming language that powers WordPress and a huge portion of the web. When you visit a WordPress site, PHP runs on the server to...

Read the full explanation

Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting effective inputs (prompts) for AI models to get better, more accurate, and more useful outputs. A...

Read the full explanation

Q5 terms

A QR code (Quick Response code) is a scannable square barcode that stores information, usually a URL. When someone points their phone camera at it, it...

Read the full explanation

A qualified lead is a potential customer who has shown genuine interest in what you offer and fits the profile of someone likely to buy. Not every person...

Read the full explanation

Quality Score is a metric used in Google Ads that rates the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. It's scored from 1 to 10, with...

Read the full explanation

In search engine terms, a query is the word or phrase a person types into a search engine. It's the starting point of every SEO strategy. Understanding...

Read the full explanation

Quora marketing is the practice of using Quora, a popular question-and-answer platform, to build authority, drive traffic, and grow your audience. People...

Read the full explanation

R5 terms

Remarketing (also called retargeting) is a digital advertising strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website. Instead of only...

Read the full explanation

Responsive design is an approach to web design where a website automatically adjusts its layout, images, and content to look great on any screen size,...

Read the full explanation

A robots.txt file is a plain text file placed at the root of your website that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections they're allowed to...

Read the full explanation

ROI (Return on Investment) measures how much profit you make relative to how much you invested. In marketing and business, it helps you evaluate whether a...

Read the full explanation

An RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format that lets users and applications subscribe to your website's content updates. When you...

Read the full explanation

S5 terms

Keywords Keywords are the words and phrases that people enter into search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo when they are looking for information,...

Read the full explanation

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility in the organic (non-paid) results of search engines...

Read the full explanation

SERP SERP stands for "Search Engine Results Page," which is the page displayed when a user enters a query into a search engine like Google, Bing, or...

Read the full explanation

A shortcode is a small piece of code in WordPress — surrounded by square brackets — that acts as a shortcut to insert complex content or functionality...

Read the full explanation

An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that encrypts the connection between your website and your visitors' browsers. When a site has SSL, the URL...

Read the full explanation

T5 terms

Your target audience is the specific group of people you're creating content, products, or services for. It's not "everyone on the internet." It's a...

Read the full explanation

Technical SEO Technical SEO refers to the optimization of the technical aspects of your website that affect its visibility and performance in search...

Read the full explanation

Text-to-image AI is technology that generates visual images from written text descriptions (prompts). You type what you want to see — a minimalist logo of...

Read the full explanation

A tracking pixel is a tiny, invisible 1x1 pixel image or snippet of JavaScript code embedded in a webpage or email. When someone loads the page or email,...

Read the full explanation

A transformer model is a type of deep learning architecture that forms the foundation of modern large language models (LLMs) like GPT, Claude, and Gemini....

Read the full explanation

U5 terms

Upselling is a sales technique where you encourage a customer to purchase a higher-priced or upgraded version of what they're already buying. Done right,...

Read the full explanation

URL structure refers to how your web page addresses are organized and formatted. A clean, logical URL structure helps both visitors and search engines...

Read the full explanation

User experience (UX) is the overall feeling and ease a visitor has when interacting with your website. Good UX means visitors can find what they're...

Read the full explanation

A user interface (UI) is everything a person sees and interacts with on a digital product: the buttons, menus, forms, icons, colors, and layout that make...

Read the full explanation

UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a URL to track where your traffic comes from in Google Analytics. They let you see exactly which campaign,...

Read the full explanation

V5 terms

Video marketing is the use of video content to promote your brand, educate your audience, and drive traffic and conversions. Video is the fastest-growing...

Read the full explanation

Viral content is content that spreads rapidly across the internet because people are compelled to share it. It might be funny, surprising, emotionally...

Read the full explanation

A visual builder (also called a page builder or drag-and-drop builder) is a tool that lets you design web pages visually without writing code. Instead of...

Read the full explanation

Voice search is when a person uses their voice to ask a question on a device instead of typing it. People speak to Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, or...

Read the full explanation

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that encrypts your internet connection and routes it through a server in another location. This hides your...

Read the full explanation

W12 terms

Web hosting is the service that stores your website's files on a server and makes them accessible on the internet. When someone types your domain name,...

Read the full explanation

A WordPress widget is a small, self-contained block of content or functionality that you can add to widget-ready areas of your website — typically the...

Read the full explanation

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It turns any WordPress site into a fully functional online store — with product listings,...

Read the full explanation

WordPress is the world's most popular content management system (CMS), powering over 40% of all websites on the internet. It started as a simple blogging...

Read the full explanation

A WordPress backup is a copy of your entire website — files and database — saved somewhere safe. If something goes wrong (hack, bad update, accidental...

Read the full explanation

WordPress caching is the process of storing a static version of your pages so they load faster. Instead of generating the page from scratch every time...

Read the full explanation

WordPress hosting is a web hosting service optimized specifically for running WordPress sites. While you can technically run WordPress on any standard web...

Read the full explanation

WordPress Multisite is a feature that lets you run multiple WordPress websites from a single installation. Instead of managing 10 separate WordPress sites...

Read the full explanation

A WordPress plugin is an add-on that extends what your website can do. Without touching any code, you can add contact forms, SEO tools, eCommerce...

Read the full explanation

The WordPress REST API is a built-in feature that lets you interact with your WordPress site's data using standard HTTP requests. It means you can read,...

Read the full explanation

WordPress security is the practice of protecting your WordPress site from hackers, malware, and unauthorized access. Because WordPress powers such a huge...

Read the full explanation

A WordPress theme controls how your website looks — the layout, colors, fonts, and overall design. Think of it as the skin of your site. Swap the theme...

Read the full explanation

X4 terms

The X-Robots-Tag is an HTTP response header used to control how search engines index a webpage or file. It works similarly to the meta robots tag in HTML,...

Read the full explanation

XAMPP is a free, easy-to-install software package that creates a local web server environment on your computer. It includes Apache (web server),...

Read the full explanation

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website in a format search engines can easily read. It acts like a roadmap, helping...

Read the full explanation

An XSS attack (Cross-Site Scripting) is a type of security vulnerability where an attacker injects malicious JavaScript code into a web page that other...

Read the full explanation

Y5 terms

Yield optimization is the process of maximizing revenue from your existing website traffic. Rather than only focusing on getting more visitors, yield...

Read the full explanation

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever made. It helps you optimize your website for search engines by guiding you through on-page SEO...

Read the full explanation

Your Money Your Life (YMYL) is a category of web content that Google holds to a higher standard of quality and trustworthiness. It refers to content that...

Read the full explanation

YouTube marketing is using YouTube to promote your brand, grow an audience, drive traffic to your website, and generate sales. With over 2 billion...

Read the full explanation

YouTube SEO is the practice of optimizing your YouTube videos so they rank higher in YouTube search results and appear in suggested video feeds. Since...

Read the full explanation

Z5 terms

In CSS, z-index is a property that controls the stacking order of HTML elements on a page. When elements overlap, the z-index determines which one appears...

Read the full explanation

Zapier is an automation platform that connects thousands of apps and services together without needing to write any code. It works by creating "Zaps":...

Read the full explanation

Zen Cart is a free, open-source e-commerce shopping cart software. It was one of the more popular e-commerce platforms in the early-to-mid 2000s before...

Read the full explanation

A zero-click search is a Google search where the user gets their answer directly on the search results page without clicking through to any website. The...

Read the full explanation

A zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw in software that is unknown to the people responsible for fixing it. The term "zero-day" refers to the fact...

Read the full explanation

Still stuck?
Watch along

Most questions are easier when you see them on screen. Find the tutorial for your problem and follow along.