Website Development is a process for creating a new website or implementing changes to one already in use, e.g. adding a significant new section to a live site. In simple terms, the process represents a framework within which all activities—from inception to review (and eventual demise, if necessary)— can take place.
There are 8 steps in the development process. These are:
• Planning : Decide why you want a website and what to create.
• Content : Create a list of the content you want.
• Design : Create a design for displaying the content.
• Construction : Write the code and load up your content.
• Test : Make sure everything works properly.
• Hosting : Choose a domain name & find a place to put your site
on the internet.
• Publicity : Build traffic via publicity the site.
• Review : Review the site at intervals it to make sure it succeeds.
Before starting
work the following basic elements must be accounted for :
• Project objective, e.g. a new website, a new section of content, a
new online application.
• Project team, i.e. a project leader, a content producer, a designer,
a coder & any other specialist skills.
• Budget: Refer to The Website Manager’s Handbook for insight
on using the concept of Website Scale to plan project budgets.
• Time frame: Refer to The Website Manager’s Handbook for
insight on using the concept of Website Scale to plan project
time frames.
• Analysis of project risks, dependencies and assumptions, e.g.
what could go wrong? What contingencies are in place, etc.
• A system for project management & communication, e.g.
weekly meetings, email, etc.
Website content encompasses all the information and applications
available on your website.
It is surprising how alike content is across many websites. While file
formats can vary, the purpose for which content is used is very similar.
Among the most widely used content formats on the web are, Plain text
,Video
,Audio
,Flash
,PDF and Other.
Plain text
Plain text is the most straightforward of all content to be published on
the web. This is because it can be authored in any word processor (e.g.
Microsoft Word) and viewed in any web browser, whether desktop or
mobile.
Video & audio
Due to the growth in broadband, consumption of video and audio has
mushroomed. However, it can be expensive to produce on a consistent
basis. Due to limited resources, it is often a better idea to spend your
money producing many high quality pages of text, instead of a few
videos that quickly go out-of-date.
Flash
Flash is a format that allows for highly interactive applications, games
and other content to be published online. However, it is also expensive to
produce and is not suitable in all circumstances.
Portable Document Format (PDF)
The main advantage of PDF is that it preserves the look of original
documents while also keeping filesize to a minimum. However, there is a
lot of evidence that PDFs are disliked by web users . As such, you should
use them sparingly.
Other Content Options
Widgets - An embedded feature of content from another site, e.g. today’s weather
from weather.com.
Mashups - A link between data on your site and some other site, e.g. Google Maps
on LikePlace.ie.
Multiple new content options are emerging all the time. Currently, many
of the most popular are ‘hosted’ services, e.g. content about you that is
hosted on other websites. This includes social networks and User
Generated Content sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and
Twitter. Such services have both advantages and disadvantages, and are
generally very time intensive.
Programming Languages used in Web Development
One of the most integral aspects of web development is web programming that is achieved with the help of programming languages. Web development languages are the platforms through which instructions are communicated to a machine and actions are pursued.
These are the world famous programming languages.
JavaScript, Java, Python, CSS, PHP, Ruby, C++, C, Shell, C#, Objective C, R, VimL, Go and Perl.
Why Is HTML Not A Programming Language?
HyperText Markup Language, commonly abbreviated as HTML, is the standard markup language used to create web pages. Along with CSS, and JavaScript, HTML is a cornerstone technology used to create web pages. HTML describes the structure of a website semantically and, before the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), included cues for the presentation or appearance of the document (web page), making it a markup language, rather than a programming language.
