Web Development. How It Plays Out.
Web development is not just reduced to coding, as some may suggest. Rather, it’s a conjunction of many tasks that end with a functioning website (in most cases, at least).
But how exactly does a web development process play out? The web development process, in broad strokes, consists of an extensive roadmap that often involves a multi-disciplinary team (with a web developer at its core). This roadmap begins with a general strategy and outline, followed by the design per se (frontend and backend), the final review, and the website’s launch.
In this article, we’ll briefly describe the stages of web development we just mentioned. Before we move forward, however, let’s give some preliminary thoughts.
An Overview of Web Development
Web development is, in a nutshell, the process of building, managing, and maintaining a website.
It relates to web design and software development in many ways. For one, it plays a massive role in how a website is laid out, all the while using coding and programming languages to that end.
Web developers are web designers to an extent, as they engage with what is known as the front end – the portion of the website that the user interacts with. At the same time, they deal with the backend, the more “out-of-bounds” facet that governs how its elements play out as the user does specific actions.
The Web Development Process. How it Goes.
As hinted, a website development process comprises various tasks. These are:
- Planning – The web developer or team gathers with the project creator or leader to draft a general overview of what the website would be like and its goals.
- Devising the Sitemap – The sitemap is the website’s outline, showcasing all the web pages it will contain and the manner in which they’ll be interlinked.
- Frontend Design – At this stage, the web developer or team must sketch a design blueprint that will serve as the basis for how the website and its web pages will be laid out visually, as well as what graphical elements and animations will be added to each of them. For this purpose, web developers usually rely on web or graphic designers.
- Backend Design (Coding) – This is where the meat of the web development process is allotted. The developer has to put into practice all the skills they learned so far to materialize the website as envisioned from the planning stages. Some languages they would use include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap. Regarding the backend, the developer would have to deal with aspects related to the database, server, and server app.
- Reviewing and Testing – Before the website is launched, the team must check how the design components work out and test for possible bugs and glitches to guarantee usability. At this juncture, website optimization will also be tested, meaning that the team ought to measure how much it takes for the different pages to load (it should not exceed the 3- or 4-second mark for higher conversion rates.)
- Launch – The final product is uploaded to a server of choice and, in theory, becomes accessible to anyone.
However, a developer’s job might extend beyond launch, as they may have to take care of issues that emerge after launch, such as security patches, SSL certificate expiry, and data backup/recovery, among many others.