In today’s episode of IT in Plain English, Tammy Ven Dange answers, “What is an iframe and when do you need to understand this term?”
An iframe stands for inline frame, and it’s basically an interactive website, video or document embedded in a website. Or, as I like to think of it…“a picture within a picture.”
A good example is when you see a Youtube video on a Facebook post or a website. The original video is stored on Youtube, but you can watch it without leaving Facebook or the website you are currently viewing.
It’s important to understand iFrames when you are considering changes to your website that may require some sort of integration with a 3rd party software. Iframes are far easier to add to your website than to build a physical integration to another software.
As an example, if you want to add an appointment-making tool like Calendly or a payment gateway like Paypal, an iframe can be simply added to your website within minutes by adding html code. This can save you time and thousands of dollars.
However, one of the major disadvantages of iframes is that they can really skew your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results as the user interactions are no longer done on your website, but on the 3rd party website. Also, the iframe view may not be configurable to match the style of your website, which can feel disjointed.
Therefore, it’s important that you consider all the benefits and disadvantages of an iframe versus an integration when deciding the best option for your organisation’s website.
So, there you have it in plain English.
If you have an IT question you want answered, feel free to connect with me here on my website or on LinkedIn and send me a message. I just might answer it on this show.
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Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with strategic IT and data decisions.
