Taking a well-functioning website is one of the keys to entrepreneurship. For that, understanding what web development is, also known as web development , will be helpful. If you are taking your first steps with a new web development project, you will learn about the possibilities offered by the Internet for new business.
It is practically an identity card to have your website, where all the information about what you do is displayed. You can allow users to interact with your product or service.
Knowing what web development is, you can offer a series of actions :
- Offer relevant information and quality content.
- Let users sign up for a newsletter to get information.
- Offer discounts.
- Provide people with the possibility of making purchases of the goods or services that you market.
Table of Contents
What is Front End Development?
If you don’t know the first steps you should take when thinking about what web development is and how to carry it out, let me tell you that the answer is “frontend”.
Large work teams can carry out frontend and back-end development in parallel. But in case you are just starting with web development, we recommend that you develop the frontend first.
In programming, “frontend” is everything that the user can see as soon as they enter the site:
- typography style
- Visual effects
- Colours
- Adaptation to different screens
- movements
In this instance of our guide on web development, it is essential to highlight that the user must have a good browsing experience.
For this reason, we must bear in mind the development of web interfaces, which make the site’s content appear in a pleasant, dynamic and straightforward way for the user. And also, avoid appearance changes in front of the different browsers that users use through a responsive design.
What are the Tools That a Front-End Web Developer Uses?
A frontend developer can use tools like HTML, CSS, or programming languages like JavaScript; or also, they usually work with frameworks.
HTML
HTML is a markup and labelling language used to make the basic structure and the content in relation to texts, images, and videos.
Knowing what web development implies knowing what HTML tags are. An HTML tag is made up of pieces of text, surrounded by more minor than (<) and more significant than (>) signs. A word (usually in English) is insert within these signs, which gives meaning to the label. They all have specific functions and uses.
In HTML, there are two kinds of tag:
- <label>
- Closing </tag>
When we refer to the structure of a web page, we refer to the content. For example, in texts, they define the hierarchical order, such as h1, h2, h3 and h4, used to identify headings.
CSS
Moving forward with our discussion of what web development is, we must highlight CSS’s role. Suppose HTML takes care of markup and tagging. CSS also recognized as “cascading style sheets”, is liable for styling the website.
According to Karen Chizón, Web UI at Globant and teacher in charge of our online course CSS from scratch: “Although it is not consider a programming language, it is in CSS, through which we make a website look good, it feels good and is consistent throughout the content.” In other words, CSS allows you to generate everything necessary for the web page to be pleasing to the user’s eyes: design, colors, etc.
Java script
Continuing with our guide on web development, you have undoubtedly heard of JavaScript, an event-oriented programming language.
JavaScript is vital to give contact to the web page. Thus, multiple actions can be carried out to function the web. For example, if we click on an option on a website, once programming with JavaScript, a window will open, and the user’s requested info will be shown.
What is Back-End Development?
Once you know what the site will look like, let’s see what supports all that structure of the web page. If you want to know what web development is and what functions the back-end has to fulfil, we could say that it is everything that happens behind each action that we carry out on a website.
It is almost the programming of a sheet or a website that we do not see, all the gear that works behind it and allows users to perform actions.
In short, understanding what web development implies is knowing that back-end development involves the activities necessary to get the server of the online site to function perfectly. These are necessary so that the website can offer a positive user experience. In this way, they are actions carried out by the web developer that are closely related to the databases and the server.
Conclusion
Web development is the work involved in raising a website for the Internet. Web development can choose from developing a simple single static sheet of plain text to complex web applications, automated businesses, and social network services.