WordPress Glossary: Terms Explained in Plain English
Short, plain-English definitions of the WordPress words you'll meet in our guides and in the WordPress dashboard.
Short definitions of the terms used in our guides and in the WordPress dashboard. Follow the links for the full story.
- Administrator
- The WordPress user role with full control of a site, including installing themes and plugins. Give it only to people who need it. See security basics.
- Auto-updates
- Automatic installation of new versions. WordPress applies minor core updates automatically on most sites; since version 5.5 you can opt in plugin by plugin and theme by theme. See updating plugins.
- Backup
- A copy of your site's files and database that you can restore if something goes wrong. See how to back up WordPress.
- Block
- A building piece of WordPress content, such as a paragraph, image, heading, button or navigation menu.
- Block editor
- The WordPress editor that builds content from blocks, introduced in WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. Also known by its project name, Gutenberg.
- Block theme
- A theme built entirely from blocks, with HTML templates and a theme.json file, edited visually in the Site Editor. See block vs classic themes.
- Caching
- Storing ready-made copies of pages so they can be served quickly without rebuilding them on every visit. See speeding up WordPress.
- CDN
- Content delivery network: servers around the world that deliver your images and files from a location near each visitor.
- Child theme
- A theme that extends a parent theme so you can change it without editing the parent's files, keeping your changes when the parent updates. See child themes explained.
- Classic theme
- A theme built with PHP template files and customised through the Customizer, menus and widgets.
- cPanel
- A popular hosting control panel used by many UK hosts, with tools such as File Manager, MultiPHP Manager and Backup.
- Customizer
- The live-preview settings screen at Appearance › Customize used by classic themes.
- Dashboard
- The WordPress admin area at yoursite/wp-admin/, where you manage content, design and settings.
- Database
- Where WordPress stores your posts, pages, settings, users and Site Editor changes. WordPress uses MySQL or MariaDB.
- FTP / SFTP
- A way of transferring files to and from your web server with a program such as FileZilla. SFTP is the secure version.
- Full site editing
- The set of features, introduced in WordPress 5.9, that lets you edit every part of a site, including headers, footers and templates, with blocks.
- GPL
- The GNU General Public License, version 2 or later, the open-source licence WordPress uses. Themes in the official directory must use it too.
- HTTPS / SSL
- An encrypted connection between your site and its visitors, shown by the padlock in the browser. Part of WordPress.org's recommended requirements.
- Maintenance mode
- The short "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance" message shown while WordPress updates. If it sticks, delete the .maintenance file. See fixing errors.
- Media Library
- Where WordPress stores the images, documents and videos you upload, at Media in the dashboard.
- Pattern
- A ready-made group of blocks, such as a hero banner or pricing table, that you can insert and edit. Themes keep theirs in a patterns folder.
- Permalink
- The permanent web address of a post or page. "Post name" permalinks give readable addresses like /about-us/.
- PHP
- The programming language WordPress is written in. WordPress.org recommends PHP 8.3 or greater on your hosting.
- Plugin
- An add-on that gives WordPress extra features, such as contact forms, shops or backups.
- Recovery mode
- A safe way into the dashboard after a fatal error, reached through a link WordPress emails to the admin address (since WordPress 5.2).
- Rollback
- Going back to a previous version. Since WordPress 6.3, a failed manual plugin or theme update is rolled back automatically.
- Site Editor
- The visual editor for block themes at Appearance › Editor, where you change templates, template parts, navigation and styles.
- Site Health
- A WordPress tool at Tools › Site Health that checks your site's configuration and suggests improvements.
- Staging site
- A private copy of your site for testing updates and changes before they go live.
- style.css
- The stylesheet every theme must have; its header comment gives the theme's name and details. See inside a block theme.
- Template
- The layout for a type of page, such as single posts, pages or archives. Block themes keep templates in a templates folder.
- Template part
- A reusable section of a template, usually the header or footer, kept in a parts folder.
- Theme
- The files that control how a WordPress site looks. See block vs classic themes or design your own.
- theme.json
- A block theme's file of global settings and styles: colour palette, fonts, font sizes, spacing and layout widths.
- wp-config.php
- The WordPress configuration file holding your database details and settings such as WP_DEBUG and DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT.