C (and/or C+, C++) - The name of a programming language so called because many features derived from an earlier compiler named ÔB' in commemoration of its parent, BCPL. Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing C++, there was a humorous debate over whether C's successor should be named 'D' or 'P'. C is now the dominant language in systems and microcomputer applications programming.

Cache - A temporary storage bin in memory and on your hard drive. Browsers stash the contents from pages that have been downloaded in the event they may be called upon to be displayed again.

Capture - A transaction generated after the Merchant has shipped the order. It triggers the movement of funds from the Issuer to the Acquirer and finally to the merchant's account.

Cardholder - The person to whom a credit card is issued. The cardholder uses a payment card that has been granted by an Issuer.

Certificate (Cert.) - An electronic document which verifies that the owner has a relationship with parties involved in a transaction, such as a Cardholder that has a relationship with an issuing bank or a Merchant that has a relationship with an acquiring bank. A certificate authorizes its owner to perform certain tasks and authenticates the owner to other parties in the transaction, assuring that the party presenting the certificate is the same party to which it was originally issued.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - An accepted standard by which programs interface with Web servers.

CGI-BIN (bin, short for binary) - The name of a directory on a Web server in which CGI programs are usually stored.

Clear Text - The unencrypted, readable text of a message.

Click-through - The process of a visitor clicking on a Web advertizement and going to the advertizer's Web site. Also called ad clicks or requests. The click rate measures the amount of times an ad is clicked versus the amount of times it's viewed.

Clickable Graphic - An image or graphic with "active" areas to allow a user to click on it. An Image Map can have many different areas that are hyperlinks or "hot". These clickable areas are called links and can take you to different sections of a Web site or to other Web sites. For example, an image of a country might be designed to allow users to click on a city or region which will then bring up information or another Web page about that place.

Client - A user's software program that interacts with a "server" and displays information based on the query from the user (client). A browser is a desktop client that requests information from servers located on the Internet.

Client/server - A front-end client and a back-end server allows multiple workstations (client) to access the same server at the same time over the LAN. The Internet is a global client/server network. The goal of such a design is to offload as much processing as possible to the desktop, leaving the shared information at the server.

Clipboard - A temporary staging area for copied information stored in memory. The clipboard stores information until you copy something else or until you exit Windows.

Cold Fusion - A server-side scripting language from Macromedia/Allaire used in the creation of dynamic Web pages. Used in conjunction with HTML. When a visitor opens the page, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor's browser, just as with ASP or PHP. This is a proprietary code.

Competitor Rankings Report - A report that compares one Web site's rankings to another.

Confidence factor - The factor by which a search engine rates the relevance or results of a keyword query. See also weight or weighted results.

Connectivity - The access method through which one is connected to the Internet. Connectivity choices are increasing rapidly.

Consumer to Consumer Commerce - Commercial transactions enacted between two individuals.

Conversion Rate - The number of people per hundred visitors that enter a site and do something other than just viewing it and leaving. Depending on the purpose of the site it could be filling out a form, sending you an e-mail, or even purchasing something.

Cookie - A handle or transaction identifier, or other token of agreement between co-operating programs. Cookies were introduced by Netscape to preserve state information on the browser. This permits a site to recognize you on subsequent visits. Shopping cart programs can record each item you have collected as you navigate through a site. When done shopping, the Web page can use all of your accumulated cookies to calculate the charge. Some people believe that any site you connect to can read all the cookies on your disk. However, only the site that issued the cookie can read it.

CPC (Cost Per Click) - Clients pay for unique traffic generated to their Web site based on clicks generated by their search engine campaign.

CPM - Advertizing term meaning cost per one thousand sightings or impressions.

Crawlers - Also called spiders or bots (short for robots), these programs automatically visit Web sites, read pages, and collect information. Used often in search engines, crawlers can artificially inflate the number of page visits for a particular site up to 30 percent. The better traffic-analysis tools filter such visits out when creating traffic reports.

Cross Linking - This is where the owner of two or more Web sites interlink the sites in order to boost their search engine rankings. If detected, cross linking often results in a search engine penalty.

Cryptography - The process of protecting information by transforming it into an unreadable format. The information is encrypted using a Key, which makes the data unreadable, and is then decrypted later when the information needs to be used again. See also Public Key Cryptography and Private Key Cryptography.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - A World Wide Web Consortium specification for designing layout and style elements of a Web page. It permits you to control the appearance of fonts, colors, sizes, etc. throughout the entire site by referencing one master page. FrontPage 98 does this by assisting you with the Themes option.

CTR (Click Through Rate) - Advertizing term indicating the percentage of viewers who click on a banner advertisement and follow the link.

Cybermall - An online shopping mall such as IBM's World Avenue.

Cyberspace - A term coined by William Gibson in his SF novel Neuromancer (1984) to describe the interconnected "world" of computers and the society that gathers around them. Today, cyberspace is the Internet and the tens of thousands of computers and networks that make up the Net.