Web Development/What is web development?

Web development is the work involved in building a website for the internet (World Wide Web) or intranet (private network). A website can be built from scratch or through What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editor. Building a website from scratch is more difficult as it requires skilled individuals to manually create and handle Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), programming, web architecture, page structure, java script files and more. Building a WYSIWYG editor is easier as all of the programming and coding is done for you and it although some platforms give you the option to code, it is not needed. Using a WYSIWYG mainly consist of design principles since the coding is developed for you.

Due to the complexity of building websites, web development is divided into two types of functions: front-end and back-end. Front-end web development consists of everything a user can view, hear or interact with on a web page (otherwise known as content) and bridges the gap between web design and back-end development. A front-end web developer normally receives design principles from the web designer and input them into the front-end code so the back-end developer can understand it and build functionality around it. Web Accessibility and web performance are two essential aspects to front-end web development because so much of information is viewed and accessed through mobile devices.

A website or application must be functional or else it will fail. Back-end developers are responsible for the functionality of a website and need to know and understand programming language, databases and server architecture. If a website or application is slow, crashing or throwing errors at users it is likely because of back-end issues.

The intricacy of web development is why most people today are using WYSIWYG’s. It is very difficult to build and maintain a website from the ground up without the bandwidth. WYSIWYG’s enable everyday people to create and manage a website on their own with little to no help or on their own.

Most websites use a Content Management System (CMS) to deliver and store information. Some of the most notable CMS’s are WordPress, SharePoint and Drupal. A CMS is useful when building a website with textual dynamic content. CMS’s are not needed if there is no content to be managed.