Website Technologies - You Need The Right Tools for Your Website.

There is never a single "perfect technology" for creating websites.

Some factors should be considered in your decision making process, such as your developer's capabilities, developer's expertise, and costs.

You should count on your developer so much that you will accept his recommendations with or without an explanation on why the technology he recommend is the best you need for the job.

Alternatively, you might choose to work with a developer who doesn't have adequate experience. This can end up costing more in the long run than it would've initially cost to hire someone more qualified. Verify his expertise from a reliable source in order to avoid costly mistakes.

The following will inform you about the various web development technologies:

Website is Like an Onion of Many Layers.

It is necessary that you know all the components of a website before choosing a technology to use.

Modern websites are like onions, with many layers. Every layer represents a unique web technology. Each "web technology layer" has its own role and purpose.

Here are some of the "layers" you should know:

Front-End Coding/Formatting Languages.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are crucial components to a website. They are simply indispensable to website.

You cannot build a modern website without any of them, and your website developer must be very good at using them.

What do they do?

HTML is a language that is used to publish the content of your website and it communicates with browsers (like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome) what content to show e.g. image, text and in what format e.g. paragraph, h1, etc.

CSS is a language used for the presentation of the content (the look and formatting) of your website, and it informs the browser what to show and how to show it on your website.

Client-side Scripting Language.

Client-end programming language are scripting languages that run on browser as well e.g. JavaScript, Flash, etc.

JavaScript is a language used to create interactive effects. The web browser has to be support JavaScript without which it will not execute in it.

Client-side programming means that the program executes on your web browser and not on the server. This is different from server-side languages, such as PHP, which are executed serially by a web server.

That is when the browser starts processing the language. These happen on your computer, so these technologies are client-side.

You've probably heard of client-side technologies like Ajax or jQuery, which are methods to enhance JavaScript capabilities.

Flash is another client-side technology. Flash is an outdated client-side technology that should be avoided. Adobe Flash was historically used to create animated experiences and interactive elements.

So many Adobe Flash effects has been overidden with HTML5/CSS3 - new versions with built-in support for effects that was formerly only possible with Adobe Flash.

Some of the disadvantages of Flash is that iOS (Apple's operating system) does not support it, which means your website made of Flash will fail on iPad, iPhones, and Macintosh.

Another problem is that search engine bots couldn't crawl website made with flash.

Server-side Technologies.

The other layers of technology that make up your website is server-side programming, meaning they run and operate on the server.

Web developers use server-side languages to program business logic or custom function on your website. There are many of them, but the most common ones are: Ruby, PHP, Java, and ASP.NET.

You might have heard of the older and uncommon ones like C/C++, Perl, Python, and ColdFusion.

Do you have any preference for what programming language your web developer should use?

As long as you retain control of the source code, I would prefer you leave it up to them. My only suggestion is that you invest in one of the "big four" options. This will make it easier to move between web developers.

Framework.

A framework (can also be referred to as a platform) is next "layer" in your website. You can refer to it as Lego® units making up the website.

Essentially, a framework is a collection of libraries that provide building blocks and resources to simplify the task of building websites. They allow reusing of code of common functions without the need to "reinvent the wheel".

It's likely that your web developer has a platform or framework that he use often, and I would advise that you allow him to stick to his choice. Just make sure that the platform/framework is flexible enough for other developers to work with in should you need to move on.

Modern complex websites mostly count on frameworks because they need to save time on web development project and also make it cost-effective. They regularly have modules of code functions they re-use for most of their projects.

Some of the popular frameworks are PHP(Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Cake PHP, Yii, Phalcon, Laminas, FuelPHP), ASP.NET(.NET, .NET Core, C#), Java(Apache Struts, Vaadin, Grails, Play Framework, Angular), Ruby(Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Padrino).

Database Server.

A database engine, also known as a database server, is the component that stores your entire website's data.

This is where database-driven website stores all the data such as transactions, products, user records, orders, images, videos, etc. You will be astonished to find out that most Content Management Systems use their databases to store the content of their website.

That is, text on your website may even be saved in the database as well.

Your choice of the database engine to use largely depends on some other factors, like the programming technology, web server, etc. Some of the most commonly used databases for website developers are Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.

Database choice for web project is dependent on server-side software and OS.

Web Server.

A web server can refer to either the hardware (hosting server) or software (an application) that distribute your website to end users.

Since our discussion is about layers of your website's technology, we are talking about the software on your server that makes the website work. The web server is the connecting link between the OS and the rest of the website technologies.

The decision depends on what other technologies you have and where your website will be hosted. Two most commonly used web servers are: IIS (Microsoft) and Apache (Linux).

Operating System.

While Linux is an essentially open source (free) OS, it is available in different varieties and distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Kubuntu, Red Hat, Mandriva Linux, CentOs, Deepin, SUSE, Debian, ) each promoted by different organizations or groups. They can also include extensions, distributions, add-ons, and support that may not come free.

Microsoft Windows Server is a paid product that cannot be used without a license. The Operating System is the bottom layer of your website; it's what makes everything work.

Most web servers run on any of the two operating systems: Microsoft Windows and Linux.

Finally, it is essential to know the roles of different website technologies in your website infrastructure. The depth of your knowledge will help you be better at giving instruction on what can be done and how to do it.

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