Web Development

What Does The Term Website Development Mean?

Web development, in general, refers to the tasks involved in establishing intranet or internet-hosted websites. The web development process includes web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting, and network security settings.  In a broad sense, web development refers to all of the actions, updates, and operations necessary to establish, manage, and administer a website in order to ensure its optimal functionality, user experience, and speed.

It may also include, but is not needed to include, all of the strategic measures necessary to ensure proper search engine ranking.  Those responsibilities are frequently divided into other categories, such as search engine optimization (SEO).   To create websites, most web developers employ Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript.

HTML defines a website's basic framework, or foundation, on which everything else is built.  It is made up of blocks that define the layout, format, and important components of a page.  Although a website can potentially be coded entirely with HTML, it will be a barebones site with no functionality until it is enhanced with CSS and JavaScript.

Even minor style changes, such as changing the colour of a button, necessitate a lot of coding when done solely with HTML. Many Web developers will have fundamental multidisciplinary skills / roles in practise, such as:

  • Web usability, accessibility, and search engine optimization
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • Information architecture and copywriting/copyediting with Web usability, accessibility, and search engine optimization in mind

Testing:  Testing is the process of assessing a system or its component(s) with the goal of determining whether or not it meets the set requirements.  Testing is the process of running a system to find any gaps, faults, or missing requirements that aren't in line with the actual needs.  Organizations, developers, and individual sites or applications all have different levels of testing.