Glossary

Technical terms from our work – explained simply, without jargon. For everyone who wants to commission a website or software without an IT degree.

Languages & Frameworks

Angular: A framework by Google for complex web interfaces. Used when an application requires a lot of interactivity.
Astro: A modern web framework that delivers websites as pre-rendered HTML – no PHP runtime, no plugin chaos. Pages generally load noticeably faster than WordPress. Ideal for marketing sites, corporate websites, and blogs without a shop.
Composer: The package manager for PHP. It installs the libraries a project needs in the right version and records the state in composer.json and composer.lock. Laravel and many modern PHP applications depend on it.
Filament: An open-source toolkit for admin interfaces in Laravel. Forms, tables and dashboards are built from PHP code instead of a hand-written frontend, which makes internal admin tools much faster to build.
HTML: The markup language of the web: it describes a page structure – headings, paragraphs, links, images. Every website ultimately consists of HTML, no matter which tool built it. Search engines and AI systems read exactly this HTML.
Laravel: A modern framework for PHP – provides structure and tools so we can develop faster and more reliably.
Livewire: An extension for Laravel that lets you build interactive interfaces in PHP without writing a separate JavaScript frontend. The server produces the changes, and the browser only swaps the affected parts of the page.
Markdown: A simple text format for content. Instead of a WYSIWYG editor, you write text with a few special characters – e.g. ** for bold. Developers use it daily; it's natural for technical teams. For traditional editorial teams, a Headless CMS provides a familiar interface instead.
Node.js: A runtime that runs JavaScript outside the browser, for example on a server or while building a website. Many modern tools such as Astro or Vite need Node.js for the build. Whether it also runs on the server in production depends on the project.
Open Source: Software whose source code is openly viewable and freely usable – WordPress, Laravel, and Astro are examples. Advantage: no licence fees, no vendor lock-in, large communities. Worth knowing: open source means free in the licence, not in operation – care and responsibility remain.
PHP: The programming language powering a large part of the web – including WordPress and Laravel. Runs on the server; visitors only see the finished result.
Responsive Design: A website that adapts to every screen size – from smartphone to large monitor, with a single codebase. Standard for years and expected by Google: it primarily crawls and rates the mobile rendering.
Static Site Generator: A tool that converts all pages of a website into finished HTML once at deployment – not on every visitor request. The result is a static website: fast, secure, and cheap to host. Astro is a static site generator.
Twig: A template language for PHP that cleanly separates design from programming logic.
TypeScript: An extension of JavaScript that catches typos and logic errors while writing code – before they go live.

CMS & Shops

Block editor: WordPress's default editor since version 5.0, also called Gutenberg. Content is made of blocks such as paragraph, image or heading and is stored as plain HTML, so it stays readable without an extra plugin.
Block theme: A WordPress theme built entirely from blocks and designed in the site editor, including header, footer and templates. Colours, fonts and spacing are defined centrally in the theme.json file.
Headless CMS: A CMS that manages content but has no frontend of its own. The design and delivery are handled by a separate system – e.g. Astro. You manage content through a familiar interface (e.g. Storyblok, Sanity), and the framework renders it at lightning speed.
Multisite: A WordPress feature that runs several websites in one installation, sharing plugins, themes and users. Handy for many similar sites, but updates and errors then hit all sites at once.
Page Builder: A tool like Elementor or Avada for assembling pages via drag and drop – no code required. The convenience has a price: slower load times and a lock-in that makes a later switch costly.
Plugin: An extension that adds features to a CMS – from a contact form to a full shop. Convenient, but every plugin is third-party code that needs maintenance: most WordPress vulnerabilities sit in outdated plugins, not in core.
Shopify: A cloud platform for online shops. No own hosting needed; instead a monthly fee to Shopify.
Theme: The design framework of a WordPress website – defines layout, colors and typography. Themes come off the shelf or custom-built; like plugins, they need regular updates.
WooCommerce: The most popular shop plugin for WordPress. Turns a WordPress website into a fully functional online shop.
WordPress: The world's most used CMS. You can manage texts, images and pages yourself – no coding required.

Interfaces & Systems

API: An interface through which two systems automatically exchange data – e.g. your shop with the shipping provider, without anyone having to intervene manually.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management – software for managing customer contacts, quotes and sales processes (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot).
Cron job: A task the server starts on a schedule, such as a nightly backup or an import every five minutes. Unlike the built-in WP-Cron, a real cron job runs even when nobody visits the website.
Customer Portal: A protected login area where your customers find and trigger for themselves what they would otherwise call you for: order status, documents, requests. Replaces email ping-pong with self-service.
Deployment: The process of transferring finished code to the live server and making it visible to visitors. In modern setups this happens automatically through Git pipelines.
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning – software that bundles business processes like inventory, purchasing and accounting (e.g. SAP, Navision).
Multi-Tenancy: One application serves several client companies (tenants) from a single installation – with strictly separated data. The foundation of almost every SaaS product.
Queue: A waiting line for tasks that don't need to happen immediately, such as sending emails or generating PDFs. The website responds right away while a background process works through the list. In Laravel it is a standard building block.
REST API: A common way of building web interfaces: programs request data via ordinary web addresses and usually get it back as JSON. WordPress ships with a REST API that an Astro site, for example, can use to fetch content.
SaaS: Software as a Service – software you don't buy and install but use as a running service in the browser, paid monthly. Examples: Shopify, Slack, most cloud CMS.
Webhook: An automatic system-to-system notification: when something happens in system A (e.g. an order), it immediately calls an address in system B. Systems stay in sync without one constantly polling the other.
WebMCP: A young standard that makes websites operable for AI agents: the page describes its functions (e.g. the contact form) in machine-readable form, and an AI assistant can execute them on the user behalf. Still early, but a glimpse of a web where assistants browse along – our own contact form is already equipped this way.
White-Label: Development work delivered under another company's name. An agency commissions us, we deliver – but the end client only sees the agency. Standard in the industry, completely discreet.

Tools & Communication

Asana: Task and project management tool for teams.
Bitbucket: Code management platform by Atlassian – well integrated with Jira and Trello.
Git: The version control system behind almost all modern software development: every code change is stored traceably and can be undone. Platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket build on it.
GitHub: Platform for collaborative work on source code – with version control and code review. Every code change is stored traceably.
GitLab: Similar to GitHub, often self-hosted. Also includes tools for automated testing and deployments.
Jira: Project management tool by Atlassian, widely used in software development. For tasks, bug reports and sprints.
Slack: Team communication tool with channels, file storage and many integrations. Popular alternative to email for internal communication.
Trello: Project management with Kanban boards – tasks as cards that move through columns (To-do, In progress, Done).

SEO & Marketing

301 Redirect: A permanent redirect from an old to a new address. The most important tool in relaunches and URL changes: it forwards visitors and search engines and carries the accumulated ranking power over. Forgotten 301 redirects are the most common cause of visibility loss after a relaunch.
AI Overviews: The AI-generated answer Google shows above the regular search results. It answers many questions directly – studies measure significantly fewer clicks on websites as a result. All the more important that your site appears as a source inside those answers.
Canonical tag: A hint in the HTML head stating which address is the authoritative version of a page. It helps when the same content is reachable under several URLs, for example with filter parameters. Google treats it as a strong signal, not a binding directive.
Core Web Vitals: Google's metrics for the user experience of a website – primarily load time, response time and visual stability. Poor scores can hurt rankings. Astro sites typically achieve green scores; WordPress with many plugins often sits in the red.
Crawler: A program that systematically fetches and reads the web – this is how Google, Bing, and increasingly AI systems collect their content. What a crawler cannot read (such as content that only exists after scripts run) practically does not exist for search or AI answers.
Featured Snippet: The highlighted answer box at the very top of Google's results that answers a question directly. Winning it means ranking above position 1 – the prerequisite is clearly phrased, complete answers on your own page.
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization – the SEO equivalent for AI-powered searches like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. We make sure your website shows up as a source there too.
hreflang: An attribute a page uses to point to its versions in other languages or for other regions. That way German-speaking users get the German page and English-speaking users the English one. The references must be reciprocal, otherwise Google may ignore them.
Indexing: The inclusion of a page in the search index – only then can it rank at all. Crawled does not mean indexed: Google decides by quality and relevance what enters the index. Each page status can be checked in Search Console.
JSON-LD: The format most structured data is written in: a separate block in the source code, kept apart from the visible content. Google recommends it over the alternatives Microdata and RDFa.
Lighthouse: A free analysis tool by Google (built into the browser) that scores websites on performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices. Scale of 0–100: below 50 poor, 50–89 needs work, 90–100 good. We optimize for 95+.
llms.txt: A text file in a website's root directory that offers AI systems the most important content in machine-readable form – a proposed standard, not yet confirmed to be consumed by major AI vendors. Costs little, does no harm, but remains an experiment.
noindex: An instruction in the HTML head or an HTTP header asking search engines not to add a page to their index. It only works if the page may be fetched: if robots.txt blocks it, Google never sees the noindex.
robots.txt: A text file in the root directory telling crawlers which areas of the website they may visit. Important: it is a request to well-behaved bots, not protection – anyone who really wants to lock content away needs directory protection or a login.
Search Console: Google's free tool for website owners. It shows which searches a site appears for and which pages are indexed, and reports problems with crawling, indexing and security.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization – measures to help your website rank better in Google and other search engines.
Sitemap: A machine-readable list of all pages of a website (sitemap.xml) that serves search engines as a signpost. It guarantees no ranking, but ensures new and changed pages get found faster – routine for well-linked sites, a must for large ones.
Structured Data: Machine-readable annotations in a page's code (Schema.org) that tell search engines and AI systems what the content means: this is a company, this is an FAQ, this is a price. The basis for rich results and for being quoted correctly by AI answers.

Security & Operations

Backup: A safety copy of the website – files and database. What matters is not that backups exist, but that they live separately from the hosting and that the restore is tested regularly: a backup that was never tested isn't one.
CVE: A globally unique identifier for a known security vulnerability, such as CVE-2026-111497. Vendors, security services and authorities use it to refer to the same flaw. Severity is usually given as an additional CVSS score from 0 to 10.
Directory Protection: A password gate at server level (HTTP Basic Auth): the browser demands credentials before the server delivers anything from the protected area – attacks bounce off before application code runs. Set up via two files: .htaccess and .htpasswd. Ideal for staging environments and internal areas.
End of life: The point after which software no longer receives security updates, for example a PHP version. It keeps running, but newly discovered vulnerabilities are no longer fixed. Anyone who keeps using it carries a growing risk.
Malware: Malicious code injected into a website – for spam, redirects or data theft. Most common way in: outdated plugins. After an infection, what counts is an evidence copy, cleanup, and closing the gap.
Passkey: A login method without a password: the device creates a key pair and is unlocked by fingerprint, face or PIN. Passkeys are bound to the real domain and are therefore much more resistant to phishing than passwords.
SLA: Service Level Agreement – a written commitment to a response time in case of problems, e.g. "response within 4 hours during service hours". Mind the fine print: response means a technician looks at the problem and gives an assessment – nobody can seriously promise a fixed resolution deadline.
SSL Certificate: Encrypts the connection between visitor and website – recognizable by the lock icon and https. Mandatory today: without SSL, browsers warn visitors away from your site, and form data would be readable in transit.
Staging: A copy of the website where updates and changes are tested safely before going live. The difference between "apply the update and hope" and controlled maintenance.
Two-Factor Authentication: Login with a password plus a second proof, usually a code from your phone. Makes stolen passwords worthless to attackers – the single most effective measure for protecting admin accounts.
Uptime Monitoring: Automatic monitoring of whether a website is reachable – every few minutes, around the clock. If the site goes down, a notification goes out immediately: we know before you do, not the other way around.
Virtual Patching: Protection against known vulnerabilities before the official update is applied: a protective rule blocks the attack pattern automatically – around the clock, sometimes before the vendor has even released a patch. We use Patchstack for this.

Hosting & Infrastructure

Caching: Storing finished results so they are not recomputed on every request – the most important performance lever for dynamic systems like WordPress. Static websites hardly need caching, because their pages already exist pre-built.
CDN: Content Delivery Network – a worldwide network of servers that delivers images and files from the location closest to the visitor. Makes websites faster, but raises data protection questions when the provider sits outside the EU.
DNS: The "phone book of the internet": translates your domain into the address of the server hosting the website. DNS records also control where emails arrive – which is why changes to them belong in calm hands.
Docker: A tool that packages applications together with their environment into containers. Development, testing and production then run on the same versions. In return, the container images have to be maintained and rebuilt when vulnerabilities appear.
Domain: Your website address (e.g. codeaeffchen.com) – rented from a registry, never bought. It is its own contract, independent of the hosting: both can move separately. Control over the domain is control over the web presence.
Hosting: The server your website lives on and is delivered from. Hosting quality co-determines load time, reliability and data location – and is more often the cause of problems than people think.
HTTP status code: The three-digit number a server answers every request with: 200 means OK, 301 moved permanently, 404 not found, 500 server error. During relaunches and troubleshooting it shows what really happens, regardless of what the browser displays.
OPcache: A cache built into PHP for code that has already been compiled. PHP then doesn't have to read and compile files again on every request. On production servers it belongs switched on.
Redis: A very fast in-memory data store. Websites use it as a cache, for sessions or for queues. With WordPress it often serves as an object cache so recurring database queries don't run again every time.
VPS: A virtual private server: your own share of a server on shared hardware, with root access and free choice of software. More control than shared hosting, but also the job of maintaining the operating system, PHP and security yourself or having it done.

Legal & Compliance

Accessibility: Building websites so they work with screen readers, keyboards, or impaired vision – contrast, structure, operability. Mandatory for many companies under Germany BFSG, but sensible without any law: accessible sites are usually the technically cleaner ones too.
BFSG: Germany's Accessibility Strengthening Act – since June 2025, it obliges many companies to make digital offerings accessible, particularly in e-commerce and consumer services. Accessibility is no longer optional but a legal requirement for many websites.
Cookie Banner: The consent prompt before a website loads tracking or external services. What matters is not the banner itself but what happens behind it: a correct consent tool genuinely blocks services until consent is given – many banners do not, making them mere decoration with legal risk.
Cyber Resilience Act: EU regulation making cybersecurity binding for software and connected products. Since September 2026, manufacturers must report actively exploited vulnerabilities within 24 hours – this also covers commercial WordPress plugin vendors and changes the ecosystem beneath every WordPress site.
DPA: Data Processing Agreement – mandatory under Art. 28 GDPR as soon as a service provider can access personal data, for instance in maintenance with backups. Governs instructions, safeguards and deletion duties. An NDA does not replace it.
GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation – EU law governing how personal user data may be stored and processed. Relevant for forms, tracking, contact data and hosting location. Websites must be GDPR-compliant, otherwise fines may apply.
WCAG: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the W3C, the international benchmark for accessible websites. For Germany's BFSG, version 2.1 at level AA is the relevant standard via the European norm EN 301 549.