Web Developing

Purposes

Establishing a website expands the reach of a company to a global scale. It allows individuals to establish their presence online. It enables knowledge to be shared among the nations. It provides avenues of communication among vast reaches of society. Given this potential, however, one must learn much to effectively achieve these goals; they are merely possible due to the nature of the global network that is accessible to a greater degree than any other mode of communication, but one must learn how to utilize this and provide information in a meaningful manner.

Approaches

A web developer must choose which language and platform to use. If any server-side scripting is to be done, Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Script Pages, PHP, and CGI scripts are a place to start. Eventually, the final output should be (x)html or xml for display in a browser. Each language has its benefits. ASP is actually a wrapper that can be coded in VisualBasic or in JavaScript, and these days has evolved into ASP.NET, maintained by Microsoft, and the backend can be written in C# or VB.NET. PHP is its own language, and CGI scripts may be written in any language available on the server, most commonly Perl. Client-side scripting and automation can be done using JavaScript, Flash, or Silverlight, to name the most prominent ones - HTML 5 and CSS 3 provide much richer features at the HTML/CSS level, without further scripting or runtime engines; however, widespread browser support has been slow (most web browsers' current versions support HTML5 and CSS3, but in many businesses and home environments, browsers remain at their older, unsupported versions).

Another aspect of the approach is the navigation scheme. The user should have easy access to navigation controls without those controls dominating the page; after all, the focus should be the content. A website need not have a filesystem hierarchy identical to the logical hierarchy of the pages, but it should separate them enough that development goes smoothly. That is, if the entire site were contained in a single directory, with no sub-directories, it would become difficult to determine which file belonged in which section; therefore, directories can be used to separate sections of the site, but too many levels of classification also makes for a cluttered namespace. Using just enough sub-directories will help the end users by providing shorter web addresses for future access.

One final consideration is search-engine optimization (SEO). These days, it is important that potential visitors be able to locate one's site via a standard web search. To accomplish this, the website must be optimized for search engines so that it is most effectively (though not fraudulently) indexed and subsequently found via searches.

Standards Compliance

Another major tenet for web development is conformance to standards, namely those published by the World Wide Web Consortium. These standards make rendering a web page easier and more predictable; because the code is structured similarly by all developers, the browser can use this format to display the content consistently on-screen. Each software vendor that manages each web technology will have standards and conventions that consumers of their products ought to weigh heavily in their design.

Projects

Sample Designs

  • XHTML Templates - these sites are designed using XHTML 1.0 Strict standards, as published by the W3C. They incorporate standards compliant HTML and CSS and good web developing and graphic design principles into a solid, effective design. Keep in mind that custom graphics are required to create the feel that you need for your site. Add-ons such as drop-down menus and Flash animations are logical additions to any site and the possibilities are endless.
  • PHP-Based Site Designs - items in this category add server-side scripting to XHTML designs like those above for a central template and menu design that allow for rapid deployment of your website
  • Joomla Templates - for use with the Joomla content management system
  • ASP-Based: see PaulWin.net

Drupal Links