Website development
Website development is a term which includes all the work for developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. It differs from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex feature-rich web-based internet applications like content management systems (CMS), electronic businesses, and social network services. Tasks commonly refer to web development may include web design, web engineering, web content development, client-side/ server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and development of e-commerce websites. Website development usually refers to building web sites: writing markup tags and coding.
The website development hierarchy is as follows:
- Client-side coding
- Server-side coding
- Database technology
There are two kinds of specialization in website developers:
- Front-end developers: They deal with the layout and visuals of a website. Skills possessed by them are HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, knowledge of frameworks, testing and debugging.
- Back-end developers: They deal with the functionality of a website. A back-end developer is a programmer who creates the logical back-end on website, software or information system. Developers create the features and components that the user can directly access through a front-end application or system. Typically, a back-end developer has expert programming skills in C++, C#, Java and other high-level programming languages.
- Full-stack developers: There’s often not a black-and-white distinction between front-end and back-end development. Front-end developers have to learn things those additional skills of back-end developers, and vice versa, especially in the current economy where marketing is thinly resourced. They work on both the server side and client side professionally.
Since the commercialization of the web, it has been a growing industry. The growth of this industry is based on businesses who wish to use their website to sell products and services to customers.
Content Management System
Recently most of the Web development platforms has come to mean the creation of Content Management Systems (CMS). These CMS can be made from scratch, proprietary or open source. In broad terms, the CMS acts as a middleware between the database and the user through the browser. The content management system is allowed to non-technical user handles the technical website. Content management systems typically provide the following features:
- SEO-friendly URLs
- Integrated and online help
- User and group functionality
- Templating support for changing designs
- Install and upgrade wizards
- Modularity and extensibility
- Integrated audit logs
- Compliance with various accessibility frameworks and standards
A web content management system (WCM or WCMS) is a CMS design to support the management of the content of Web pages. Most popular CMSs are also WCMSs. Web content includes embedded graphics and text, video, Photos, audio, maps, and program code that displays content.
Such a content management system (CMS) typically has two major components:
- A content management application (CMA) is the front-end user interface that allows a user, even with limited expertise, to add, modify, and remove content from a website without the intervention of a webmaster.
- A content delivery application (CDA) compiles that information and updates the website.
An ever-growing set of tools and technologies have helped developers to build more dynamic and interactive websites. This has allowed for many opportunities to media distribution and decentralizes information. We can see the examples of the rise of cloud-based services such as Google Docs, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Dropbox.
These web services allow users to interact with applications from any location at any point in time, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.