Terms Used in EditMe

The following EditMe-specific terms are used frequently on this site. Here's a quick description of what they mean, with links to more information.

API - Stands for Application Programming Interface. EditMe provides an API toolkit for programmers that enables them to write code within an EditMe site to implement custom functionality. See JavaScript API.

Account Manager - The web site that allows EditMe site administrators and owners to manage their account. The Account Manager can add sites to your account, upgrade, downgrade, display your payment history, update your billing information, and cancel your account.

Acton Settings - A special screen built into the Acton family of skins that provides visual customization, including management of the navigation toolbar, logo/header customization and more. You can get to it by navigating to the ActonSettings page of your site.

Administrator - A user that has full permissions to do everything on the site, including using the Account Manager.

Attachment - A file uploaded to a page, such as an image or PDF document. All images displayed on your site must be uploaded as attachments. See Attachments.

Bandwidth - Each EditMe pricing plan provides a specific amount of bandwidth. This is the amount of data uploaded and downloaded to your site each month. See Disk Space And Bandwidth.

CSS - Stands for Cascading Style Sheet (or style sheet for short), a technology that controls how web pages look. EditMe uses CSS for formating. Each skin (also defined on this page) includes a different style sheet. Style sheets can be edited just like any other page on your site, though knowledge of CSS is required. See Style Sheets.

Captcha - An image that contains a word and prompts a website user to type in the word. This test makes it extremely difficult for spammers to write programs to flood your site with comments or page edits containing advertising links. See the Captchas section in Site Security.

Disk Space - Each EditMe pricing plan provides a specific amount of disk space. This is the amount of space on EditMe's servers taken up by your site's page content and attached files. See Disk Space And Bandwidth.

Domain - A domain is the www.yourname.com part of a web site address. EditMe sites use YourAccountName.editme.com as the domain name by default, though custom domain names can be configured. See Custom Domains.

Editor - The WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor used to edit pages on your site. The editor is a browser-based version of a word processing application. It provides a familiar toolbar to make formatting changes to your page content. See Using The Editor.

Groups - Groups are collections of users (also defined on this page). Groups are used in the definition of Policies (also defined on this page) for complex access control configurations. Groups are an optional feature; their use is not required for most uses of EditMe.

Include - And "include" is a page that is included in another page. For example, if you have some content that you want to edit in a single page but display on several different pages, you can use an include tag. See Using Includes.

Layout - Layouts are special pages that contain code defining how content will be displayed on your site. The Layout of a site is responsible for displaying the current page, its comments and attachments, and providing site navigation. Each skin (also defined on this page) provides a different Layout page. See Layouts.

MIME Type - A MIME type is a label for a type of content on a web site. For example, HTML pages use the MIME type text/html, while images might use image/jpeg. The MIME type tells your browser how to display a given file. EditMe uses MIME types (also referred to as "content type") to identify how to treat special pages on your site, such as Layouts and Style Sheets (also defined on this page).

Menu Page / Menu Area - Your EditMe site has a menu for putting navigation links and other content you want to be displayed on every page. The Menu page is just like any other page in EditMe, except that it is always displayed either on the top, left, or right of the page content. See Editing The Menu.

Page Name - Your site can contain multiple pages of content, each of which you can edit. Each page has a name, which EditMe uses to distinguish the page from other pages. The name of a page is used to access the page from the Internet, and so has specific rules regarding what characters it can contain. See Page Names. Also see the definition for Page Title below.

Page Properties - A tab available on the editing screen containing several options to tell EditMe how a page should behave. For example, you can assign a specific security setting to an individual page, or hide it from the site search. See Page Properties.

Page Title - A Title is the text that EditMe will display above the page content when you view the page. The title can contain any characters, unlike the Page Name (defined above). See Setting The Page Title.

Policies - Policies extend EditMe's standard security capabilities by allowing site administrators to create custom security settings for individual or multiple User Groups. Policies are an optional feature; their use is not required for most uses of EditMe.

RSS - An XML (defined below) format for easily sharing content among different web sites such as news headlines. EditMe uses RSS to provide a list of changes made in the last 30 days. See RSS Feeds.

Registered User - A user on your site that has a login but is not an administrator. Your site's [[SiteSecurity Security Settings]] define what Registered users can do. Also see Registrations.

SSL - A mechanism to encrypt data as it flows between a web server and a browser. SSL-encrypted web addresses are identified by an https:// instead of http://. This encryption makes it extremely difficult for hackers to intercept and view data as it travels across the Internet. See SSL (https).

Scripted Page - A special type of EditMe page that contains code using EditMe's API (defined above) to implement some custom functionality. 

Settings / Site Settings - A series of screens accessible only to administrators that provide access to site-wide settings. See Site Administration.

Site Name - The name of a site is the part that comes before .editme.com in the domain (defined above). For example, the name of this site is "wiki". You can rename your site using the Account Manager (defined above).

Skins (Acton, Brighton, Classic, Newton) - A Skin applies a packaged style sheet and layout to your site, and is the easiest way to customize the look and feel of your site. Once a skin is applied, technically-savvy administrators can customize the style sheet and layout individually. See Skins.

Styles / Style Sheet - See CSS above.

Template - A special page that can be used as a starting point or default content for new pages. See Page Templates.

Tools Menu - Depending on what skin you've applied, the tools menu is either displayed as a drop down menu at the top of the screen or as a vertical list of links on the right of the screen. This is where you'll find links to manage your site, menu and the current page. The Tools menu is discussed in some detail in the Getting Started Guide.

Users - Logins to your site. Though "user" is sometimes used to refer to anonymous visitors to your site (a.k.a. "public" users), all users with a login and password can be managed by site administrators. See Users.

Versions - Every time you edit the content or change a property of a page, a new version is saved. Each version is a snapshot of the page and its properties at the time it was last saved. Attachments are also versioned this way, separately from pages. See Page Versions and Attachment Versions.

XML - A simple text file format that both humans and computers can easily view and read. EditMe uses XML in its Layouts and Scripted Pages.

XSL Layout - Older versions of EditMe used XSL-based Layouts. If your site was created after 10/14/2007, it does not use XSL Layouts. See Legacy XSL Layouts and Upgrading to new JavaScript Layouts.