Web Writers Glossary

Ancestor Pages/Links
Ancestor pages/links refer to all links or link sets more than one level above a page in any given section. Pages/links directly above a page are known as parent pages.

Anchors
Anchors are links internal to the page. They help the visitor skip to the information he or she wants, rather than scrolling to find it. Anchors are employed in lengthy pages, often with an index of the page's anchors at the top of the page. An example of an anchored page is our A-Z Index.

Borrowed Links
Borrowed links are links that are housed in one section but referenced in another section. For instance, The "visiting" page might be housed physically in the "about" section of a site but referenced in the "admissions" navigation set.

Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbing is the navigation set that details the direct ancestors and parent pages of any given page. An example of breadcrumbing for a "visiting" page would be:

Homepage >> About >> Visiting

Child Pages/Links
Child pages/links refer to a page or link or group of pages or links on the level immediately below a page or link in any given section.

Contextual Hyperlinks
Contextual hyperlinks refer to any link that's embedded into the main content of a page. Also known as contextual links, these links are simply made in the context of a paragraph of related copy, and provide an important alternative to other modes of linking pages.

Homepage
In architecture, a homepage is the top page of a subsection of a site. For instance, the biology department has a small subsite, the first page of which is the homepage.

Global Links
The global link set is the set of primary links of a Web site. These links describe the main content groups that a user will find in the site. Global links are considered persistent -- they appear on every page of the site. Pages that fall under the global link set include "primary link pages" and subsequent "general content pages."

Main Well
In graphical user interface design, the main well of a page is the section in which content is placed. In Ingeniux, it is the body content section area.

Navigation
Navigation refers to the system employed on a Web site to let users know where they are on a site and to aid them in getting where they'd like to go. Navigation includes both the placement and use of link sets, as well as the appearance of "wayfinding" cues such as page titles and section headers.

Parent/Child Nav
Parent/Child Nav refers to parent navigation that displays child directory navigation. This can be seen wherever the left navigation expands to display an indented list of child directory links. Upto 3 levels can be shown in an Alternate Navigation Component 

Parent Pages/Links
Parent pages/links refer to a link or group of pages or links on the level immediately above a page in any given section.

Related Link Sets
Related links are any link or group of links that have relevance to a page but that are not in the parent, peer, or child set of a given page. Related links can be either external or internal to the site. If they are external to the site, the links should open in a new Web browser window. Related links typically can be found in the right column component of our Web pages, and should be formatted as follows: RELATED LINKS: to be consistent throughout the site.

Sibling Pages/Links
Sibling pages/links refer to a link or group of pages or links on the same level as a page in any given directory or folder.

Sub
In manuscripts, "sub" is an abbreviation for subhead. Editorially, subheads on the page are used to break up content into subsections. Anchors, on the other hand, are used to divide pages into discreet sections.

Syndicated Content
Syndicated content is content that resides in one area of the site (e.g., the News section) but that appears on other pages in other sections of the site. Components are a form of syndicated content.

Tactical Links
The tactical link set is the set of task-based links that allow a user to either accomplish the critical tasks for which the site is designed or to find key tasks quickly and easily. Like global links, tactical links are persistent and show up on every page of the site. Examples of tactical links on our site include links to the A-Z Index, Search and Webcam.