Glossary of common terms

Abbreviation for "Cascading Style Sheets". CSS defines styles and colours and how they should be applied to a web page.

An electronic collection of information, stored in tables of data. For example, Moodle contains a table of all users in a site. There are many brands of database software, but most people use MySQL.

The place where Moodle can save uploaded files. This directory should be readable and writeable by the web server user but it should not be accessible directly via the web.

A name given to a computer or a group of computers. eg moodle.org. You can buy new domain names from a domain name registrar, of which there are many.

To move your files from a personal computer "up" to a server. Also see FTP and download.

The dirroot is the name for the directory in which you have installed Moodle. It's a setting in config.php that must be entered correctly.

File Transfer Protocol - a method of copying files from one computer to another. For example, you might FTP your Moodle files from your home computer to your web server.

A business that will host your web site for a monthly fee. You provide a domain name that you own, and after they've set it up for you, you can copy your files to their server and set up your site.

A scripting language that can be used to write small programs in web pages, such as popup menus. Moodle uses a little Javascript.

A Moodle Nightly is built automatically every day from the most recent code, and is available from the Moodle.org download page. It can be useful if you don't have CVS, but you want to try the latest features. It can also contain bugs, since they may not have been well-tested yet.