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Dictionary of concepts on GOV.UK

Base path

Synonyms: slug, location

A reserved URL on www.gov.uk that is associated with a content item.

Content

The data, generally words, that an editor has written and wants to eventually publish for users.

Content ID

Synonyms: artefact, document

A unique identifier shared by content items which represent the same content. A content id may have content items in different states, locations and translations.

Content item

The representation of an edition of a document with links to be stored in the Content Store.

Dependency resolution

The process of recursively following dependencies (links) between documents to work out which expanded links need updating.

Details

Synonyms: details hash

Part of the schema that captures content-y data in a way that is opaque to the publishing platform, but understandable by a rendering application.

Document

A collection of editions, used to refer to all of the iterations of a single piece of content in a certain translation.

Document type

Synonyms: format, content type

A way to classify content items in publishing applications. Sometimes displayed to the end user.

Edition

Synonyms: a version

Captures a version of a document, or representation of some entity required to render GOV.UK.

Allows rendering applications to see titles and descriptions of linked documents, and follow links recursively, without having to make multiple content store requests.

Synonyms: links hash

Part of the schema that captures that other content that has been tagged to the content.

Publishing

Putting content live on GOV.UK

Publishing application

Synonyms: backend application

Associates a document with the application that was used to publish it.

Rendering application

Synonyms: frontend application

Associates a document with the application that was used to render it.

Route

A record that describes how the router should hand control rendering over to a rendering application based on URL.

Schema

A JSON schema representation of a kind of document. Usually maps one to one with document type.

Tagging

Lets editors capture how a piece of content relates to another piece of content.

Unpublishing

Taking content off the live site, because it was published in error, or is being redirected to a better form of the content.

Withdrawing

Putting a big notice on a page because it's no longer current/accurate.