Why Web Development?
Why Web Design?
If you ever wondered why a business needs a website, here is your answer: Many people—particularly young people—are tech-savvy and turn to Google when looking for a service. For instance, when in need of a haircut, she might Google “Where is a hair salon near me?” Now, if your salon’s site appears on the top of the search engine results page (SERP), it will receive more traffic. And, of course, more traffic means more potential customers. However, when the customer arrives at your site, it is crucial that there is a professional-looking and functioning site waiting for him.
This, of course, is where web design comes into play. A web designer is someone who designs the layout of the website to optimize user experience.
In contrast, a Web Developer masters web coding such as the three core web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript). HTML5 is the content and CSS3 is the style and JavaScript is the performance.
And it is good practice to keep the HTML and CSS separate, using an external style sheet. This is where the ‘cascading’ metaphor comes into play. If you, for instance, have 10 web pages linked to the same CSS sheet and you change the background-color from red to black, all 10 pages change. As for function, JavaScript is a programming language that has enabled many technological advances of the web. Unlike CSS3 which is kept separate from the HTML5, JS is embedded into the HTML.
Beyond Design: Development
Lastly, there are capabilities beyond those discussed above. While web developers are undoubtedly familiar with the front-end languages, Full Stack Web Developers also are familiar with server-side technology (e.g., PHP, Python) and databases (e.g., MongoDB, SQL) along with the relational database management system (RDMS) MySQL. Such developers, for example, are sure to be familiar with the server-side language PHP. If you are wondering what PHP stands for, prepare to have your mind blown. As the PHP site puts it, “PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. This confuses many people because the first word of the acronym is the acronym.” Apparently, this is a ‘recursive acronym.’ Coupled with a familiarity with PHP, the designer is surely armed with an understanding of how servers themselves work. Plus, there are other helpful languages such as My Structured Query Language (MySQL), used to create databases.
In conclusion, web developers are armed with the knowledge and skills to create a professional web site. If you truly want to appreciate the complexity and hard work of a developer, open a web page with Google Chrome, hold Ctrl + U. What you will see is sure to blow your mind. I hope you found this introductory article interesting enough to investigate further.