Technical glossary
A glossary and cheat sheet of terminology used in the e-commerce technical documentation.
Introduction
This cheat sheet offers a comprehensive overview of key terms and definitions essential for enterprise e-commerce understanding.
Origin of the terminology
Although the terminology originates from the e-commerce sector, it is equally applicable to related projects such as product directories - where features like “add to favorites” may replace traditional basket and checkout systems - or to any directory-based application involving classifications, categories, hierarchical structures, searching, filtering, sorting, and pagination.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| ISR | Incremental Static Generation (on build and runtime phase) |
| CSR | Client Side Rendering (in the browser) |
| SSR | Server Side Rendering (on the server, on runtime phase, on each request) |
| SSG | Static Site Generation (on build phase) |
| PPR | Partial Prerendering - a combination of static and dynamic. The best of both worlds. It's still an experimental feature of Next.js. |
| static | Cached document on CDN like HTML output (uses only bandwidth) |
| dynamic | Document rendered dynamically on the request (uses compute) |
| long tail | Less frequently accessed pages or content that are typically generated dynamically at the time of the request, often using SSR or ISR to optimize compute resources. |
| above the fold line | The visible part of a webpage without scrolling, critical for SEO and Core Web Vitals, as optimizing it enhances UX and load times. |
| below the fold line | The part of a webpage that is only visible after scrolling, may contain CSR, media players or other things that can be lazily loaded |