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Glossary
API

API

An API (Application Programming Interface) is how two pieces of software talk to each other, exchanging data through a defined, secure set of rules. Webflow's own APIs let you build integrations, manage content, or connect other tools directly to your site.

Individual APIs vary depending on their purpose and the apps exchanging data. Some connect apps with external information, like a weather app that updates on the hour, and others handle sensitive information, like a password manager that hosts your banking information. Other examples of APIs in action include when Google Maps uses location data from a phone’s GPS or when an ecommerce store accesses PayPal at checkout.

‍Webflow’s API lets you build integrations, host user memberships, and incorporate ecommerce into your website. The Authorized User API protects user information, and the Authorized Info API holds information about the authorization you’re using.

APIs are also what make it possible for AI agents to work directly with a tool through MCP (Model Context Protocol), which gives an agent a standard way to discover and call a tool's API without a custom integration for each one.

See what's possible in Intro to Webflow integrations.

Relevant courses

Interactions & animations

Create motion and interactions that guide visitors and tell your brand's story.

Getting started with Webflow

Get familiar with Webflow’s website experience platform.

Collaborate with your team

Learn how to set up roles, permissions, and workflows in Webflow so your entire team can work together safely, confidently, and efficiently.

Intro to Webflow integrations

Learn how to extend Webflow by connecting it to the tools and systems your team already uses.

Webflow SEO fundamentals

Learn how to plan, build, and maintain a search-friendly Webflow site using best practices and built-in SEO tools.

Webflow for Content editors

Learn how to edit and publish content confidently, without changing your site’s design.

Other glossary terms

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Selector state

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A pseudo-class that allows you to change the styles of an element when it is hovered, pressed, or focused.

Bottom margin

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The spacing between the bottom border of an element and the element(s) below it.

Certificate authority

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A certificate authority (CA), also known as a certification authority, issues digital certificates that verify a website’s owner.

Traffic

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Traffic, or web traffic, refers to the number of users who visit a website over a period of time.

Alt text

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Alt text, short for alternative text, refers to text that describes online images.

Inline style

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Inline style applies CSS to an individual HTML element using the "style" attribute within the HTML tag.

Flexbox

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Flexbox is a CSS layout mechanism that offers precise alignment and stacking control for the content inside an element.

Bad neighborhood

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Bad neighborhoods are groups of websites that search engines have downgraded because they violate search engine guidelines.

Footer code

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Footer code creates a section at the bottom of every web page that displays important information like disclaimers, copyright or contact information, and links to related documents.

Free plan

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The perfect Webflow subscription for getting started, giving you access to all Designer features, so you can start building a site right away.

Color field

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A color field specifies a graphical color picker or user interface for entering a color into a text field in a seven-character, hexadecimal format.

DNS records

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DNS records store important information about domains and hostnames. They function like maps, directing DNS queries to the desired endpoint.

Typography section

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A section in the Style panel that houses CSS properties related to how typography is displayed such as font, font size and height, and align.

Domain

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A domain, or domain name, is the unique address that directs to a website on the internet.

Gamut

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Color gamut describes the full range of colors a device can reproduce on its display.

Element edges

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The color-coded borders of elements you'll see in the Webflow Designer.

Reference field

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A CMS field used in Collections. This powerful field allows you to link to other Collections within your website to populate fields in Collection lists and Collection pages.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a collection of strategies to enhance a website’s ranking and visibility on search engines.

Email template

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Email templates — or pre-designed HTML layouts — ensure consistent branding and visual aesthetic in marketing campaigns.

Flex-align

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A flexbox property that lets you customize the alignment behavior of flex children, based on the cross-axis of the flex container. The cross axis is the opposite of the flex-direction property, so if you set the direction to vertical, the cross axis is horizontal. Options include start, center, end, baseline, and stretch.

Flex-grow

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The flex-grow CSS property defines how much an element grows relative to other flexible items inside the same flex parent.

Canvas

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The <canvas> tag in HTML5 creates a container for dynamic graphics and image rendering on a webpage.

Designer

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The main interface where you can build sites.

End user

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An end user is an individual or group who directly interacts with a particular product, service, or user interface (UI), such as a website or application.

Meta title

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A meta title is an HTML element that defines a web page's title and appears in browser tabs and search snippets on search engine results pages (SERPs) as a clickable headline.

Background

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A website background is a visual element behind webpage content, enhancing aesthetic appeal and user engagement.

Forms section

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A section of the Add panel that houses form elements like inputs, checkboxes, and radio buttons.

Closing tag

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A closing tag is an instructional piece of code that ends a section of page content in HTML.

Right margin

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Right margin is a CSS property that defines the space between the right edge of an element and its surroundings.

Video field

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Available in CMS Collections. You can add videos via a link — not an embed code — from an online video host like Vimeo or YouTube. Just paste in the video link and it’ll appear in the native video format from the 3rd-party video player.

Percent

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A measurement unit relative to an element's parent.

Desktop breakpoint

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A breakpoint, or media query, is the width at which a website’s design and layout adjust to fit screens of different sizes. When designing in Webflow, breakpoints for smaller devices inherit styles from the base — or desktop — breakpoint by default.

Facebook button

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A Facebook button is a clickable element on a website that allows users to connect to or share content on the social media platform.

Basic section

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A section of the Add panel that contains the elements that act as a website's fundamental building blocks (e.g., div block, list, button, etc.).

Display: inline-block

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The display: inline-block CSS property defines an element’s appearance and behavior. CSS designers use this code to create website layouts.

JavaScript

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JavaScript is a programming language web developers use to create dynamic interactions and effects for web pages and applications.

Site

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What you create in Webflow! You can publish sites to a webflow.io staging subdomain for free, export the code on a paid plan, add hosting on any paid plan, or add a Site plan to any site to connect your custom domain and unlock hosting features.

Control flow

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The control flow is the order in which a computer program executes its instructions or statements, guided by control structures.

Static page

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A static page is a document with fixed content that makes up an individual web page on your site.

Widget

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A widget is an interactive element embedded in a user interface that facilitates specific user actions or displays important information at a glance.

URL redirect

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URL redirect, or URL forwarding, is a web server function that automatically sends users from one web address to another.

Right padding

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The inside spacing between the right border of an element and the elements inside it.

List item

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A list is a Webflow element that displays multiple pieces of content in a structured, visually appealing way. The individual elements that make up the list are called list items.

Paragraph

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A typography element used for displaying multi-sentence text content.

Top of the funnel

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Top of the funnel (TOFU) refers to the initial marketing funnel stage where potential customers become aware of a brand’s existence.

Responsive design

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Responsive web design (RWD) is a web development and design approach to create websites, applications, and user interfaces (UIs) that display and function effectively on any device or screen size.

Dynamic element

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Dynamic elements are web page components that can change based on user interaction or external factors, like a live news feed, without requiring a page refresh or reload.

Java

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Java is an object-oriented programming language for building dynamic, interactive web applications across platforms

Media query

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A media query is a CSS technique that applies different styles to a website or an app based on the characteristics of the device displaying it, such as screen size, resolution, and browser viewport.

ASCII

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The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is an encoding standard that assigns numerical values to characters and translates them into computer-readable code.

Conditional

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Conditionals, also known as conditional statements or expressions, are coding instructions that tell a program to execute an action for a certain condition.

Call-to-action (CTA)

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A call-to-action (CTA) is a website feature that prompts visitors to perform a specific action.

Meta description

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An HTML attribute you can use to give a short description of the contents of a webpage. Search engines often display this in results pages (SERPs).

Preview mode

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A feature that allows you to see how your site would be displayed in a browser without needing to publish your site or leave the Designer.

Document object model (DOM)

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The document object model is a platform- and language-neutral interface that lets programs and scripts dynamically access and update the content, structure, and style of documents.

SSL

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SSL (secure socket layer) is the standard method for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.

ALPN

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ALPN stands for Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation. It’s a Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension that aids client and server identification during secure data transfers.

Inline Frame (iframe)

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An inline frame is an HTML element that embeds an HTML document within another webpage.

Collection list

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A Collection list is a Webflow element that lets you dynamically display content from a CMS Collection.

Input field

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An HTML input field, represented by the syntax <input>, is a web page element where users input data, like text and numbers.

Urgency

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Urgency is a marketing term and psychological trigger that incites potential customers and website visitors to act swiftly.

Top margin

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Top margin is a CSS property that defines the space between the top edge of an element and its surroundings, such as other elements, the browser window, or the edge of a container.

ID selectors

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You can assign element IDs from the Element settings panel in the Designer. ID selectors are useful for HTML anchors, linking to page sections, or for custom code.

Section

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A section is an element of design layout that divides a web page into visually distinct segments.

Collection item

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An individual item within a Collection. For example, in a “Blog Posts” Collection, the Collection items are individual blog posts.

JPEG

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Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, JPEG is a file format that uses lossy compression to maintain manageable file sizes without compromising image quality.

Collection limits

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By default, Collection lists display all items in a Collection, but you can add limits to control the number of Collection items that display.

Navigator

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A navigator, or a navigator window or panel, is a graphical user interface (GUI) that provides an overview of a website's structure and layout.

CMS Collection page

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A dynamic page that Webflow automatically creates for each Collection item. When you design a Collection page, all the pages that are created for each Collection item will have the same template but different content.

CSS preprocessor

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A CSS preprocessor is a program that helps developers write Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) by providing advanced features such as variables, functions, and nesting.

Padding

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Padding is a CSS property defining the space between an element's borders and its content.

X-Ray mode

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A grayscale view of your site’s canvas that visually displays each element’s border, margin, and padding when hovered over.

Google Universal Analytics Tracking ID

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A unique ID you can use to link your Google Analytics account to your Webflow site.

AJAX

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Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a web development approach that combines technologies to allow web content to update without reloading.

BigInt

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BigInt, which stands for “big integer,” is a JavaScript data type. JavaScript uses data types to decide how to treat a piece of data.

Tablet breakpoint

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A Webflow canvas setting for creating styles that affect viewports with a minimum width of 768px and a maximum width of 990px. Also known as the tablet media query.

Webclip

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A 256 x 256 px image associated with your website that shows up when your website link is saved to an iPhone home screen.

Utility pages

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Utility pages are default, customizable templates for your site’s 404 page, Password page, and Search results page.

Ancestor

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Any element that is further up the element hierarchy of the document tree. For example, the Body element is the ancestor of all elements on the Designer canvas.

Client-side

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Client-side is the user-facing part of a web app, responsible for processing user input and displaying content.

Position section

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A section in the Style panel that houses CSS properties related to the positioning of an element.

Interpolation

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Interpolation is a mathematical process that estimates and creates new values based on known values and their relationship.

Custom font

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A custom font is any non-system-default typeface you manually upload to your website.

Bundling

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Bundling, or bundle pricing, is a pricing technique in which retailers sell products together at a lower price than they would be sold at individually.

Color wheel

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The color wheel shows several colors in a circle to represent primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and their relationships.

Behavioral targeting

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Behavioral targeting is a marketing technique that leverages user data to deliver personalized ads to drive conversions.

Micro conversion

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Micro conversions are small but important user actions on a website that contribute to the overall conversion funnel.

Publish site

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The act of updating your live site to reflect new design changes.

.htaccess

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.htaccess is a powerful configuration file that allows you to configure and control how your website functions.

Closed-loop marketing

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Closed-loop marketing is an ecommerce marketing strategy that uses customer data to create and improve targeted content.

Optimization

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Optimization is a systematic approach to improve a website's appearance, functionality, and visual appeal to enhance the user experience, improve search engine rankings, and achieve business objectives.

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

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The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a standardized framework developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that facilitates automated data exchange between web systems and applications.

Width: auto

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The way browsers calculate an element's width automatically where Block level elements fill the available space of its parent and Inline elements shrink to the size of its children/content.

Unbranded form submission notification

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Form submission notifications that have no reference to Webflow (e.g., notifications sent from “[email protected]” instead of “[email protected]”).

Save

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The Designer automatically saves your progress every 10 seconds.

Redo

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To move forward one step while making changes to a Webflow site.

Modal window

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A modal window (or modal) is a web element that displays above all content and restricts user interaction until it’s manually dismissed.

Button

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A button is an interactive element that facilitates user actions.

Flex-sizing

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A flexbox property that determines the resizing behavior of flex children across viewport sizes. They can shrink, grow, or remain static.

Workspace

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A space to hold and access sites, members, settings, and integrations. All users start with a Workspace that can become collaborative when and as needed.
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