This short guide of website development intro is for busy entrepreneurs. If you have a business to run and have little time to learn everything about website development, this guide is for you. In 5 minutes, we’ll explain briefly how website development works. This is useful information if you want to oversee and have some control over the direction of your website creation project.
1. Planning backwards from the end goal, and choosing a domain name
When it comes to website development intro, it’s crucial to align your goals with the right design. There is a huge range of possibilities for web design, but there are only a few choices of what is appropriate for your business and marketing goals. Do you simply want an online information bulletin? A business blog to educate customers? An online channel to acquire new leads, new bookings, new product orders or subscriptions? A team of user experience (UX) designers and web developers will brainstorm the primary goal of your website’s function, appearance, and content.
The domain name is your website’s official name. You will pay a yearly fee to register and maintain the domain name, so be sure that it is the name that you want (you can’t change it after).
2. Creating brand visual guidelines
A brand’s visual guidelines exist to standardize all visual design aspects of the website, such as the logo, fonts, colors, spacing, and layout. This also offers consistency across all customer-facing visual media of the business (menus, brochures, documents, advertising, social media, etc.)
3. The front end vs the back end
A website is simply a package of text and image documents that is rendered by web browsers such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. These documents are stored in a server that is rented from a hosting service (unless you have your own hosting server).
The ‘front end’ part of your website is what your visitors will see on the browser; the ‘back end’ part deals with data storage and logical processing from various user inputs, something that is invisible to users because it happens on the server side.
One common mistake that all startups make is to rely on one or two IT technicians to do everything, from hardware maintenance to website development. To avoid burning out your precious human resources, it is a good idea to delegate IT-related tasks that are not the main focus of the company.
Juicebox Management’s web creation service can help you create beautiful and responsive websites and free up time for your technicians to do other important tasks, such as maintaining your apps and database.
4. The front end development
Front end web developers are usually concerned with three basic programming languages: HTML, CSS and Javascript. HTML marks up the basic blueprint and content of your web pages — for example, the order of your sections, forms and tables, and the words of the paragraphs and headings.
CSS styles the blueprint, giving the web pages some visual order. CSS can help you edit the typeface (the font family), the font size, font color, background colors, margins, layout, and even adds simple animations upon interactivity with the user. CSS also helps create a more responsive website, that is, the website will look pleasant regardless of the device on which you view the website.
Javascript adds even more complex interactivity and makes the website content more dynamic. When a web developer codes in HTML, the basic blueprint stays constant, unless the developer writes an additional section or feature. Javascript allows the website to add features outside the existing code automatically.
For example, if you have a form, and you’d like the users to not leave anything blank, Javascript can add a warning text telling the visitor that they have yet to complete an input field. The changes that Javascript makes are temporary and will disappear if the page is refreshed, unless the results of the interaction are stored into the server.
5. The back end development
When it comes to website development intro, having a functional back end is essential for processing and storing user inputs. If your website is more than just an information bulletin or a static portfolio page, the back end is necessary to be able to process and store user inputs, such as their name, the contact information, what they ordered from your product pages and more. There are many programming languages that will manage data processing on the server side. WordPress mainly uses PHP, but other platforms may use Ruby, Python and C#.
Most people are familiar with Excel spreadsheets. Web servers store data in similar fashion to how people store data in spreadsheets, that is in rows and columns of tables. However the exception is that web servers use a unique language called SQL. Since data processing is mostly invisible (secure and immutable) even to admins, admins must use SQL to command how the data in these database tables must be handled.
WordPress uses PHP for another purpose, which is to help you build websites and publish content without heavily editing the source code. This is how a website creation agency such as Juicebox Management is able to work efficiently and meet clients’ expectations. Anyone can use WordPress for free, but the degree of customization will depend on the developer’s expertise and access to premium features.
Are You Ready To Build A Website?
Website development is an entire world in itself, but this bite-sized introduction should help you understand the process a little bit better. As an entrepreneur, it is smart to delegate tasks, but it is wiser to do so while having the basic knowledge of the processes and procedures. Hopefully this article about website development intro will help you to understand more about website development
Juicebox Management is a creation house for digital marketing agency including website development in Jakarta and Bali. We have experience in creating websites for a variety of industries, each with their own unique needs, target customer persona, and brand messaging. We do not only create websites; we also provide content with compelling copywriting that attracts, educates and inspires visitors.
In addition, we maintain your website so that they remain up to date, secure, future-proof, and become visible to search engines with our search engine optimization services.
Learn more about website development with Juicebox Management.
