How To Learn Website Development

In today’s world web development is one of the most developing industries. This industry grows so fast that almost everybody is eager to learn all the fascinating stuff which the web development industry creates. Since the web and the computerized reality are developing ceaselessly and developing at a fantastic rate, web development is an inseparable part of digital technologies now.

Today, a traditional university degree is no longer a major requirement for becoming a web developer. All skills and knowledge might as well be received through online courses and hands-on experience. All that matters is whether you are capable of doing the job or not. Employers no longer care whether you have a nicely framed university diploma hanging on the wall or not.

Web development jobs are also extremely mobile and flexible since it doesn’t really depend on any particular platform. Lots of people want these jobs, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Read this blog post, if web development skills are something you’ve been chasing after and want to know more about it. We’ll go over useful stuff pertaining to web development skills. Also, we’ll go over what is good to learn for launching a career in web development.

What is web development?

Web development is simply defined as building websites (including maintenance) with the purpose of hosting them online. This is also about designing web pages or apps (like Amazon or Facebook) which run in a browser.

Want to be good at web development? Learn several coding languages, programming frameworks, databases, markup languages, etc. This is very important as different websites utilize a vast pool of digital technologies and deliver a broad set of functionalities. The processes you’ll run into include analysis, usability concepts, information security, software engineering,  etc.

Digital technologies have gone through lots of drastic modifications, especially during the last ten years or so. Today, if you’ve mastered HTML or JavaScript is great but it just isn’t enough anymore. Yes, this knowledge is still essential. However, try to get a good grasp on Bootstrap or Angular because these are some of the most widely used frameworks today.

The client-side represents the “face” of web pages. And, the server-side utilizes computational logic behind each site or an app.

What basics to learn for having a working website?

No doubt, having a well-built site is extremely important since it is an aspect that establishes a virtual presence. A visually appealing and highly functional website is crucial to driving your business to success.

The two most common kinds of websites – dynamic and static. Those websites that are “static” simply don’t establish interactions with Internet users. Therefore, the “dynamic” websites should interact with visitors to the fullest extent.

What are the most essential languages and platforms used for web development? The list includes C++, PHP, WordPress, Magento, Node.js, Python, Java, Laravel, React. All these tools are quite vast. 

So, spend a fair amount of time practicing. But put your worries aside, they are not super tough. Once you find the right online resources and learn step-by-step, you’ll realize – it is doable.

How does front-end differ from back-end?

Let’s get down to the technical perspective. Okay, any site has two parts:

• Main brain
• An organized access point. To utilize and interact with the main brain through the user interface (UI).

Software engineering defines the main brain as the “back-end”. And the accessing interface is defined as the “front-end”.

When speaking about the front-end, the first thing which comes to mind – the visual side. Basically, this involves the ability to visualize what exactly you’re building. And then the ability to verify to make sure everything looks exactly the right way. In other words, you need to check whether the data was displayed correctly and the whole website is following a particular design all the way through. In case if something has gone wrong and doesn’t display correctly, you should fix it and make it work. However, you may end up doing a whole bunch of styling tasks for a website without necessarily growing your skillset. So, keep that in mind.

Back-end development is more abstract, a lot of the time languages are interpreted meaning you don’t know there’s a massive issue unless you test it thoroughly (compilers usually help a lot with this). Lots of stuff can be hidden away, so you’ll have to keep on updating your theoretical knowledge from time to time. This not only means handling database queries but also making sure you validate input in such a way that will prevent someone from crashing or extracting the data.

On the back-end side, it is much more important to account for edge cases compared to the front-end side (bar browsers, etc.). Making sure that people can’t abuse those lines of code you wrote is extremely important. This means – don’t just hack around until it works,  do it until it is completely on the safe side and secured.

Front-end web development:

Whenever we view websites’ images, links, login forms, etc., all this stuff comes under front-end web development. Here is what to learn in order to start building them:

• HTML5 – used for building basic components of digital tables, forms, insert images;
• CSS3 –  utilized mostly for pure styling purposes;
• Javascript – for creating every logical thing (i.e code).

In order to create completely from scratch, try the following frameworks just to ease everything out:

• Bootstrap
• Angular
• React

Back-end coding is a meticulous process involving employing scripts on a server-side and producing customized responses suitable for user’s requests every time these requests are sent to any website.

In-demand server-side frameworks:

• Laravel
• .Net Framework
• Node

Okay, we got this – those folks who toil on the back-end side are called the “back-end developers”. And those who are on the front-end side are called “front-end workers”. But what about those who work on both sides? They should have a name too, right? These guys are called “full-stack developers”. And anybody who is on the Software Operations side is called a “DevOps engineer”. Go ahead, make your choice who you’d want to be.

What do you need to learn CSS and JavaScript for?

The fundamental stuff to comprehend while at the basic level – CSS, JavaScript, HTML.  However, saying “this is everything to it” and omitting tons of different important concepts is like saying “all” to baking with just having flour, eggs, and milk at hand. This is not how the craft of front-end development should be approached. Don’t forget about those advanced application frameworks built on top of CSS or JavaScript! Here are some essential concepts to work on to master skills in web development:

• Asynchronous programming process. Just for the reason that the front-end needs to establish communication with the back-end via the Internet. You’ll need AJAX here. This is important for any non-trivial front-end that involves significant amounts of synchronicity.
• Event-driven programming process. Since UI in some cases is able to trigger unpredictable events, learn how to handle bizarre things.
• Caching and state management. The managing state can be potentially challenging especially in comparison to the back-end. Sometimes it is necessary to combine the event-driven user-generated state, so you’ll need to develop knowledge in handling the unpredictable and often failure-ridden asynchronicity of an API.

Just some advice: Focus on learning JavaScript and put everything into practice. Learn DOM (Document Object Model) to control browser elements. JavaScript makes it easier to manipulate DOM objects with JavaScript libraries (JQuery can do it).

How to learn server-side of web development (back-end)

Skilled back-end engineers work with underlying layers, database servers, computer architectures, the network, etc. Learn how to produce optimal and performant algorithms while keeping the whole infrastructure in mind. So, wrap your head around the concepts by starting with a rather simple language. Don’t jump into complicated topics straight away.

Common languages/frameworks for back-end programming: Python, PHP,  ASP.NET, etc. To learn how to use databases, start with a SQL or MySQL. Then learn NoSQL e.g. MongoDB.

Get good knowledge in HTTP and deploy web apps in accordance with the language or framework you chose. Learn about security, API, SSL, and how it is used properly.

More steps to take for learning back-end development:

Learn Node.js

Given your proficiency in JavaScript, learning Node.js may be an easier path that would allow you to build complete end-to-end applications on top of JavaScript. Plenty of web frameworks out there on top of Node like Meteor or Express.js. Additionally, you can try to connect them to traditional relational database management systems like MySQL.

Learn WordPress

Learn WordPress since it does almost anything out of the box and without too much hassle. Try to dive into its internals because it’s what can improve your skills significantly. Since WordPress is based on PHP and running with MySQL, study its codebase, start building dynamic themes (or customizing existing ones), move to build simple plugins, and iterate further. This will give you quick results and the ability to build on top of an existing codebase.

Stick to a traditional curriculum

Go for a traditional Computer Science curriculum because such programs will likely focus on studying a standard language first (or a multi-purpose one like Java or Python would be very useful too). Move to fundamentals of TCP/IP, start building sockets or any raw web requests.

The route of going through various phases of the web development learning process, find and utilize plenty of helpful online programs, digital universities, and eLearning platforms for you. Just go ahead and enroll and learn until you feel ready to work on freelance. Doing many pet projects related to back-end activities is a smart way to go.

Bottom-line

With so many ideas flooding the world today, people wonder how useful and practical web development can be. Most of us would agree that this is the use of web development that brings in a great deal of profit for companies. Today, businesses are driven to reach out to people around the world more than ever. Websites provide opportunities to have people contact them directly. The Internet has become the ultimate means of global communication. This is a reason why the importance of web development keeps on growing.

It is important to remember that every company wants to succeed in business. If you have never heard of the term “product creation” before, then you might want to take a look at this. It is the use of business tools to help a company develop and sell products and services to customers. With all of these, it is obvious that web development is a very useful tool for business and for the betterment of the world. You will be able to market yourself and your company to millions of people worldwide. Also, you’ll help people out as well as help the companies out. The uses of web development will be useful for many years to come.

So, read about web standards and the history of web technologies. Learn and think about accessibility and semantics. Read and learn about the technologies and challenges we face today in our technological era. Try to recognize what future challenges are going to be like because the world needs more talented web developers and engineers.

Master web development skills from the ground up by practicing step-by-step. If you think you know enough about HTML, CSS, and JQuery, just keep on learning more, don’t stop practicing, and try different things. The best investment you can do is learning JavaScript from the ground up. By the way, you can do it with online courses available on the Grinfer eLearning platform!