Our services - What is web development?

In 1958, the Advances Research Project Agency (ARPA) did research for military knowledge and information exchange and achieved its first success in 1969: the transmission of a message was successful and ArpaNet was created. According to history, this is the origin of the Internet - consisting of four switching stations: 3 in California and 1 in Salt Lake City. 

In 1971, 23 computers were already connected to the ArpaNet. In 1973, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the technical Internet protocol TCP and thus made it possible to transmit data in small packets. The term "Internet" was used by Crew for the first time and means "Interconnected Networks". 

The commercialization of the Internet began in 1990 when an easy-to-use system was introduced to the general public: The World Wide Web (www). 
⁠The number of host computers doubled by 1994 and experienced an exponential increase in 1995. 
⁠A broader mass began to use the Internet and in 1998 Google appeared on the radar as a search system. 
⁠Since then, the Internet has continued to evolve - and so has web development. While pages on the Internet used to be a collection of text boxes, today we have a comprehensive and sophisticated presentation of multimedia content, and the experience on a page, user navigation and speed are also key factors in determining whether or not to consider revisiting it. 

In this article we address the question: What exactly is web development? 

What is Web development?

 Simply said: it’s the development of software for the Internet. Web development or web programming includes, among other things, websites and web applications (web apps). Web browsers (e.g. Google Chrome or Apple Safari) are used to display media documents such as text, graphics, audio and video. 
⁠Let's now move on to the technical basics of a website. 
⁠The storage space on a server, offered by internet service providers (web hosters), is the basis for every internet presence. Many web hosts offer packages that include a domain, database, server services and web development tools in addition to hard disk space. 

Domain

The domain is the unique and unambiguous name under which a website can be found. Here short and concise formulations offer themselves. So if someone is looking for an agency in the Stuttgart area, they are more likely to find what they are looking for at www.flanke7.de  than if they have to enter a name like "agency-for-jamstack-websites-performance-marketing-and-more” between the "www" and the country code "de".

Webspace

The web space represents the storage space - that is, the space on a server rented from a web hoster. This storage space also determines how extensive a website can be designed. Many web hosts already offer complete solutions in their packages, so that a website can be expanded if necessary. 
⁠Anyone who wants to read up on the subject of web development will sooner or later stumble across the terms frontend and backend. 

Backend

The backend refers to a part of the application or program code that enables the operation of a program or, for example, a website. The backend is also referred to as the data access layer of software (or hardware) and the user cannot access this area.
⁠You can think of it like a restaurant - the backend is like the kitchen and the web developers are our cooks. The professionals behind the swinging door know their trade and "build" from their ingredients, the dish (corresponds e.g. to a website), which the restaurant visitor gets served afterwards. 

Frontend

The served dish in this case is the frontend. The frontend is an application layer above the backend and includes all the software (or hardware) that is part of a user interface. The frontend is what the searcher sees on the web - in its full glory, easy to use, nicely presented, navigation friendly and inviting. So in our example with the chefs, the frontend can also be the entire restaurant and the prepared dish is just the equivalent for a designed landing page. 
⁠As chefs in the backend, web developers have the task of also co-designing the ambience in the restaurant (meaning the experience on the website) and implementing it in the frontend in a user-specific way. 
⁠The basics are clear, the web hosting package is selected. So how do we proceed? 

There are many possibilities for the creation of websites: besides flexible content management systems, homepage construction kits, of course the source code can be written by yourself. This requires knowledge of programming languages: 

HTML 

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is used in web development for rough structuring by tags. In this way, elements such as text sections, headings, graphics, etc. can be defined and such source code can thus represent the basic structure of a web page. 

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is used to assign rules for the display of defined elements. In addition to instructions for the layout, it also deals with the color scheme, typographies, fab gradients and much more. 

JavaScript 

 If you like it dynamic, you will use JavaScript. This programming language extends ads basic framework of HTML and CSS with e.g. interactive input fields, fold-out menus and slideshows. 
⁠Web development includes many more terms, such as databases, other languages like React and of course related disciplines like web design, cloud computing, software architecture and more. So the world of web development is very comprehensive and of course much more complex than our restaurant example. But if you want to understand at a glance what's behind the term, you should now have come a step further. 

Websites à la carte - and fast! 

The user experience on a website depends on many factors: Design, navigation, ease of use - and speed. Nothing is more frustrating than being on the Internet looking for something and a page takes so long to load that you can make yourself a coffee in between. 

Of course, there is already a solution for this as well: Jamstack Website. 
⁠Jamstack Website convinced mainly by their speed, scalability and hey! They are more climate friendly. If you want to understand exactly what is behind Jamstack, you can have a look here.