SO YOU WANT A WEBSITE

If you haven’t read our article on “What is Web Design“, we suggest you give it a quick read so you can understand the scope of this article. In that article we explain what a web design is and how it does not mean the same thing as web development or equate referring to a whole web project. A website is like a marriage – web design being one part while the other half being web development.

Most people, when referring to a web project, say web design by default. However, now that you understand what a web design is (or is not), we hope to help you understand what a web developer is and when you need web developers versus when you need web designers.

“A WEBSITE IS LIKE A MARRIAGE – WEB DESIGN BEING ONE PART WHILE THE OTHER HALF BEING WEB DEVELOPMENT”

WEB DEV EXPLAINED

Web development is the part of the web equation that no body aside from the web developer (or web developers) see(s). They are the underdogs of a website project as the only part of a website you can really see is the visual design of the site. However, if you pay more attention as you browse through the pages of a website, you will notice the workings of the web development process. Have you ever gotten frustrated that a page isn’t loading properly, or that a function on the website isn’t working or performing as intended? Maybe you’ve been impressed by how the web page loads or makes you feel like you are actually in an application that doesn’t load any pages. Maybe you’ve seen or experience something amazing that makes the website enjoyable to use. Without realizing it, you have been affected (positively or negatively) by the art of web development.

What is Web Development

Web development is the process of taking a web design that is a static visual file, and translating what you see into an non-static platform that a client can interact with. They are created using web dev languages such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP and many more frameworks and libraries of these languages. These “languages” have specific rules (called syntax) as to how to write out a website. This process is commonly referred to as coding a website. In the process of becoming web developer, they often study multiple languages to leverage the power and versatility of multiple web development languages to create jaw-dropping functionality that makes the web design come to life.

Web Development Examples

It is difficult to show you examples of web development as easily as showing a web design because web design is visual while web development is functional. If you have browsed the internet, you already have a underlying understanding of what what development could be. It is what makes the website work and come to life.

To show you how the back-end of a web dev project looks like, take the following instances of some HTML5 and CSS3 code that is written on the back-end of a web site, following with the result of what it would actually look like on a web page:

[html]
<div class="blueBox">
<h1 class="testHeading">Heading</h1>
Some Text to follow the heading

<button class="button">Some Button</button>

</div>
[/html]

[css]
.blueBox button.button {
background: white;
border: none;
padding: 1%;
color: #2b6fb7;
}

.blueBox h1.testHeading {
color: white;
font-weight: bold;
}
.blueBox {
background-color: #2b6fb7;
padding: 1%;
box-sizing: border-box;
color: #efefef;
}
[/css]

Makings of a Website

You can see how wanting to show a simple heading, paragraph and button consists of writing 24 lines of code. When you hire a web developer or a digital marketing agency such as us, you can see how much work is involved in a web development project to get your web design translated into a website that functions and looks how you would like it too look. Understanding the difference in separating web design and web development is key in a successful web development project. Equipped with the tools that we have informed you with regarding these differences, you now know how to interact with your web designer or web developer and know what to expect from them. Showing you these processes, we also hope help users and clients appreciate the work that goes into making a website specific to their needs. It’s not as simple as dragging boxes around on a screen, but involves knowledge of an art that is often not appreciated.