Web development Tutorial: A Complete Guide for Beginners

A website is basically a collection of various webpages that are all related to each other and can be accessed by visiting a homepage. It is composed of several elements and it is important to take care of each of them during the setup. This Web Development Tutorial will provide you a complete guideline about building a website and the skills required in the following sequence:

• What is Web Development?
• Why do we need it?
• Basics of Web Development
• Front End Skills
• Front End Frameworks
• Back End Skills
• Data and Database
• Server and Deployment Skills

What is Web Development?

Web development is basically the tasks associated with developing websites for hosting via intranet or internet. The web development process involves web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting and network security configuration.

A website can either be a simple one-page site, or it could be an incredibly complex web application. When you view your website on the web in a browser, it is because of all the processes involved in web development.

Why do we need it?

Websites act as a bridge between one who wants to share information and those who want to consume it. It helps you reach out to potential clients at a global stage. There are various reasons that show the importance of a website:

• A website is an online brochure that helps you advertise your business offers.
• It provides a platform to reach out to a far-and-wide global customer base.
• You can also have the possibility to influence your readers through your blogs on a website.
• You can show all your ideas and publish them on a website.
• If you have a business idea, you can open an online shop and sell your products or services online.
• You can communicate with your customers, giving them an opportunity to express themselves.

Now that you know what is web development and why we need websites, let’s get into the depth of this web development tutorial and learn about the basic skills required.

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Basics: Web Development Tutorial

Websites are a bunch of files stored on computers called servers. The Servers are computers that are used to host websites and store the website files. These servers are connected to the giant network called the World Wide Web.

Browsers are programs that you run on your computer. They load the website files via your internet connection. Now, there are 3 main components that make up every website:

• HTML – HyperText Markup Language(HTML) is the foundation of all websites. It’s the main file type that is loaded in your browser when you look at a website. This scripting language is used to structure the different parts of our content and define what their meaning or purpose is.

• CSS – Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) is used for styling the HTML elements. It provides 1000s of styling functions which are used to style the HTML elements defined by us. It is the language that we use to style and layout our web content.

• JavaScript – This programming language allows you to interact with elements on the website and to manipulate them. While CSS adds style to HTML, JavaScript adds interactivity and makes a website more dynamic.

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Front End Skills

It is important to make sure that web applications download fast and are responsive to user interaction, regardless of a users bandwidth, screen size, network, or device capabilities.

The intermediate Front End Skills include:

• Responsive Design – We use different gadgets like computers, phones, and tablets to look at web pages. The web pages adjust themselves to the device you’re using without any extra effort from your end. This is due to the responsive design. One major role of a front end developer is to understand the responsive design principles and how to implement them on the coding side. It is an intrinsic part of CSS frameworks like the Bootstrap. These skills are all interconnected and so as you learn one you’ll often be making progress in the others at the same time.

• Build Tools – The modern web browsers come equipped with developer tools for testing and debugging. These tools allow you to test the web pages in the browser itself and finds out how the page is interpreting the code. Browser developer tools usually consist of an inspector and a JavaScript console. The inspector allows you to see what the runtime HTML on your page looks like, what CSS is associated with each element on the page. The JS console allows you to view any errors that occur as the browser tries to execute your JS code.

• Version Control/Git – Version control is the process of tracking and controlling changes to your source code so that you don’t have to start from the beginning if anything goes wrong. It is a tool that is used to track the changes made previously so that you can go back to a previous version of your work and find out what went wrong without tearing the whole thing down.

Front End Frameworks

CSS and JavaScript frameworks are collections of CSS or JS files that perform different tasks by providing common functionality. Instead of starting with an empty text document, you start with a code file that has lots of JavaScript present already in it.

Frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses which makes it important to choose the best framework for the type of website you’re building. For example, some JS frameworks are great for building complex user interfaces, while others excel at displaying all of your site’s content.

Some of the popular frameworks are:

• jQuery
• Angular
• React
• Vue

This was about the front end skills that are required to build a website. Now, let’s move on with this web development tutorial and know about the different back end skills.

Back End Skills

The back-end layer forms a dynamic connection between the front-end and the database. To get this layer working it’s important to know at least one of the programming languages such as Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, etc and knowledge of server-side frameworks such as NodeJS is mandatory.

• Python is an open-source, object-oriented programming language that was released in 1991 and ever since it has become one of the favorite languages of most software and web developers.

• Java is an open-source, high-level programming language which was released by Sun Microsystems in 1996. It follows the Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA) approach that makes it compatible to run on any platform.

• PHP is an open-source, server-side scripting language used to develop the back-end logic of an application. It is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive websites.

• NodeJS is an open-source, JavaScript framework used specifically for creating the back end or the server-side of an application. Through NodeJS, JavaScript can now finally run on the server-side of the web.

Data and Database

The data layer is a massive warehouse of information. It contains a database repository which captures and stores information from the front-end, through the back-end. A prerequisite is to have knowledge of how data is stored, edited, retrieved, etc. An understanding of Databases such as MySQL, MongoDB is a must.

• MySQL is an open-source, Relational Database Management System that provides multi-user access and supports multi storage engines.

• MongoDB is known for its ease of use and its quickness in handling a large amount of data. It is an open-source, object-oriented, NoSQL database which is highly scalable and is efficient in handling unstructured data.

Server and Deployment Skills

Servers are basically computers that store website files and other resources like databases.

Server Setup

To make a website accessible publicly on the internet, it needs to be installed on a server. Once you have your domain name and server space, it’s time to set up the site on the server. The first thing is to direct the domain name to the server’s unique IP address. Then you need to set up website files and finally the database and other configurations.

Deployment Tools

To get files from your own computer up to your server, you need a protocol. This is basically a method of transporting files or other data to and from a server.

The deployment tool stores your FTP/SFTP settings, and when a change is pushed in Git to the master branch, the tool will transfer the files for you. So, there is no need to remember which files you changed, reducing the number of mistakes you make.

So these are some of the important guidelines and skills that you need for web development. With this, we have come to the end of our web development tutorial. I hope you understood the different aspects of website development and the different skills you need to learn. Start you career with this Web Development internship program.

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