WordPress Glossary

Short, plain-English definitions for the WordPress terms we use across this site.

B
Block Bindings
An API that wires a block's attributes to data sources like post meta or custom fields.
B
Block Patterns
Ready-made layouts editors can insert and edit as a single unit.
B
Block Theme
A modern theme built entirely from blocks and configured via theme.json.
C
Child theme
A small theme that inherits its parent and preserves your customisations across parent updates.
C
Core Web Vitals
Google performance metrics that feed directly into search rankings: LCP, INP, CLS.
C
Customizer
The classic UI for tweaking colours, headers, menus, and widgets with a live preview.
G
GPL
A software licence that guarantees the freedoms to run, study, modify, and redistribute code.
H
Headless WordPress
Using WordPress purely as a content backend, paired with a separate frontend (e.g. Next.js).
H
Hook
WordPress's extension points: actions run code at a moment in time; filters modify data.
H
Hreflang
An attribute that tells search engines which language version to serve a user.
L
LCP
Largest Contentful Paint — the time until the main content element appears.
P
Plugin
A code package that extends WordPress with new functionality.
R
REST API
An HTTP/JSON interface to read and write WordPress data from external applications.
S
SEO
The practice of improving a site's visibility in organic search results.
S
Sitemap
An XML list of every URL on your site that you want to tell search engines about.
S
Structured Data (Schema.org)
A standard markup that helps search engines understand content and show rich results.
T
Theme
A bundle of files that defines the look and layout of a WordPress site.
T
theme.json
The central configuration file for a block theme's colours, fonts, spacing, and layout.
W
WooCommerce
The official open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
W
WordPress
An open-source content management system (CMS) that powers more than 40% of the web.