WEB DEVELOPMENT BASICS

Want to get started as a web developer? There are lots of useful tutorials on the web, covering various website programming aspects. However, this tutorial aims to give you an overview. So, get started by reading the content on this page, and then move on from there.

Any website consists of a collection of files which are stored in one or more folders on a server. Actually, really simple sites can be made out of a single html file, but almost all of them have disappeared, being replaced with much better looking web properties.

A server is just a computer which stays on at all times. To achieve a high degree of reliability, the server must use high-quality hardware parts, efficient cooling systems, etc. Some of the most popular server operating systems include Windows Server, Red Hat, FreeBSD, Mac OS X Server, Solaris, etc.

While it is true that people can use their own computers as servers by installing one of the OSs in the list above on them, building a system that can run without problems 24x7x365 is a complex task, not to mention that those servers need to patched, protected from hackers, etc. Therefore, it is best to use the services provided by a web hosting company to store your site; the prices start at only a few dollars a month, after all. As with most things in life, you get more by paying more, of course.

So, the server stores the set of files which make up your website. It is connected to the Internet, and the site files can be accessed by making use of a regular browser, which is also known as a client.

There are front-end, back-end and full-stack web developers; the last ones are able to build both front-end and back-end projects.

Front-end coders create client-side applications, which are run using web browsers. Apps like these do their jobs when people load a website, for example. These programmers will often use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to code their projects.

HTML is the standard programming language that's used to build web pages. While HTML code can't create nice-looking site elements on its own, it continues to be the foundation onto which websites are being built. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) gives developers the power to apply various styling options to HTML-based web projects. If you want to use custom colors, various fonts, etc. the CSS language can help you with that. Finally, JavaScript is used to add dynamic elements to website pages. If you see a page that incorporates a fancy weather widget, chances are that its developer has used JavaScript code for it.

Back-end developers create server-side applications which can't be accessed directly by end users, but do all the hard work behind the scenes, retrieving the information that's stored in databases, etc. While client applications run on people's computers, server-side apps run on dedicated servers. Most server-side coders use PHP, Ruby, Node.js and Java for their projects.

PHP is the recursive acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", a free, open source scripting programming language. It is processed using an interpreter, and the result of its execution is sent out as an HTTP response. Ruby on Rails is a high-level programming language which was developed in the mid 1990s and supports the object-oriented paradigm.

While JavaScript is a front-end programming language indeed, Node.js is a JavaScript-based runtime environment which can run modules outside the web browser. Due to this feature, Node.js allows developers to code server-side scripts, creating dynamic web pages on the fly. And Java is a general-purpose coding language which supports the OOP programming paradigm as well; its key advantage is that the code can run on all the supported platforms without having to be recompiled each time.

The required back-end databases are often accessed using the SQL (Structured Query Language) scripting language, which makes it easy to handle structured data.