What does What? Simple Definitions please?

[Voyeurette]

I thought I was computer literate....    but I must have blinked and the world passed me by....

I was told, when I asked someone what a CMS was that I have entered the world of TLA (Three Letter Acronyms)...

What exactly does a porthole do for you?   ( I installed tinyporthole on one of my SMF boards.....    but still not sure what it can give me?  is "on" a correct way to refer to it's installation? )

What (in simple terms) is a CMS ?   I was told it was a content management system.   Well, OK..  what the heck does that mean?     It seems to be some sort of interactive website development tool?   

What IS Mambo?    I went to their site.  I read the pages.  I tried the demo.  I still can't figure out what it IS.

What is Joomla?  Is it like Mambo? 

I could go on... there are lots of other words, names of things, that are referred to in these threads and I have spent hours reading them and not understanding the VERY basic concepts...

so...  has  someone, somewhere  made up a reference page defining what all these things are and what they do? 

( and yes I have also checked in wikipedia - sometimes I find an answer there but not always - usually leads to more questions... )

If anyone has time to answer, that would be great !!   Thanks in advance   

[Kindred]

not porthole...  PORTAL.

A portal essentially puts a "front page" in front of your forum... allowing for announcements, and surrounding blocks (like the header, footer, right and left columns...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal

A CMS is exactly what you posted: a content management system. It is a system to manange content. Like a portal, the CMS is usually the front page of the site, however, unlike a portal, the CMS allows multiple categories of articles, and usually links to other sub-programs... or even bridges to other softwares... all of which run under the CMS framework.
(think OS...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

mambo is a CMS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_%28software%29
Joomla is a fork of the old mambo cms... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joomla



remember....  this first step to learning is learning where to look for answers.  For web terminology, Wikipedia and Google are invaluable.

[Voyeurette]

Thank you thank you thank you !!!

*laughs at my spelling*  I knew it looked wrong...    guess I wish I was sailing!