The JAMstack Glossary

JAMstack: JavaScript, APIs, and Markup - A new way of building websites and apps that delivers better performance, higher security, lower cost of scaling, and a better developer experience.

CMS: Content Management System - An application that supports the modeling, creation, and service of content.

JavaScript: An object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.

API: Application Programming Interface - A software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.

REST: Representational State Transfer - A set of rules that developers follow when they create their API.

GraphQL: A syntax that describes how to ask for data, and is generally used to load data from a server to a client.

Static Site: A website built with HTML that has fixed content on each page.

SSG: Static Site Generator - An application that takes your site content, applies it to templates, and generates a structure of purely static HTML files ready to be delivered to visitors.

Serverless: A serverless solution is one where developers are freed up to focus more on application development without needing to worry about provisioning, scaling or maintaining servers (or containers), and whose running costs are proportional to the system's usage levels.

CDN: Content Delivery Network - A geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content.

E-Commerce: Electronic Commerce - The buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.

Web Form: An HTML form on a web page that lets visitors enter their information.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language - The standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.

Markup: A system for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets - A style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language like HTML.