When you implement both front-end and back-end development on a website, it\u2019s referred to as\u00a0full-stack development<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You may also have heard the term \u201cweb design,\u201d and\u00a0the two terms\u00a0have a similar meaning. People tend to use \u201cweb development\u201d to refer to more technical elements, and \u201cweb design\u201d to refer to more visual or surface-level features. We have a video on\u00a0web design and development\u00a0if you\u2019d like to learn more.<\/p>\n Web development is a critical element in any digital marketing campaign because your website lies at the heart of all your online marketing. Your\u00a0paid ads,\u00a0social media, and\u00a0email campaigns\u00a0ultimately lead users back to your site.<\/p>\n Before we dive into the steps of the web development process, you must know the major web development components that contribute to your website.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll first look at what it means to build a website, and then we\u2019ll examine some different types of web development processes. Read on to learn more!<\/p>\n When you engage in web development, you\u2019re building a website \u2014 but what exactly does that mean?<\/p>\n The best way to answer this question is simply to run through some terminology. A\u00a0website<\/b>\u00a0is a file stored on a\u00a0server<\/b>, which contains multiple websites. These servers are connected through the Internet.<\/p>\n When you visit a website, you visit it using a\u00a0browser \u2013\u2013<\/b>\u00a0a program designed to load and display websites on your screen from servers. You may also hear browsers referred to as\u00a0clients<\/b>.<\/p>\n All this can be helpful to know when learning about web development since much of the process centers around your browser and server.<\/p>\n When developing a website, you have two primary options for how to do it: Coding from scratch or using a website builder. When you code from scratch, you develop the entire website from the ground up. If you opt to use a website builder, you use a content management system (CMS)\u00a0to create it from a preexisting model.<\/p>\n A CMS gives you the basic building blocks of a website and lets you piece them together without having to know in-depth coding. In other words, the CMS handles the coding for you in advance \u2014\u00a0you just arrange the surface-level elements.<\/p>\n While using a CMS is very helpful if you don\u2019t know anything about coding, hand-coding gives you the opportunity to create a more customized website for your business.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re ready to develop your website, you\u2019ll want to follow a particular series of steps to ensure optimal results. For the next section of our web development overview, here\u2019s a six-step description of the web development process!<\/p>\n The first thing you should do before you develop a website is to lay out a plan. Don\u2019t just start throwing together a homepage right off the bat \u2014 take the time to figure out what you want for your site.<\/p>\n The best way to do this is to list specific goals. Some common goals are things like \u201callow users to buy our products on our site\u201d and \u201ceducate users about our products and services.\u201d You may also have goals like \u201cfamiliarize users with our team members.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, consider who you\u2019re trying to reach with your site. Who will visit your site? What will they want to find?<\/p>\n Throughout the rest of the development process, keep your goals and target audience at the forefront of your mind.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve come up with some general goals, you can start planning the actual layout of your site. The best way to do that is to create a\u00a0sitemap, where you simply plan out all the different sections and pages that will make up your site (not to be confused with an\u00a0XML sitemap).<\/p>\n You can make a sitemap online, or you can simply use a pen and paper. You\u2019re just trying to visualize how all the pages on your site will be organized and interconnected.<\/p>\n Ultimately, this sitemap will be the key to creating an effective\u00a0navigation setup\u00a0on your site, allowing users to easily find their way around it.<\/p>\n The next step is to register a\u00a0domain name. Your domain name is your site\u2019s URL. For a business website, the best approach is to simply use your business name as your domain name.<\/p>\n You can search on a website like\u00a0GoDaddy\u00a0to see if your domain name is available. You may need to tweak and adjust your name to find an available domain. From there, you\u2019ll need to choose a website host.<\/p>\n When creating a domain name, try to make it clearly associated with your brand, and keep it short if possible \u2014 longer domain names are harder for users to remember.<\/p>\n If you use a website builder like WordPress, you can also register your domain name there.<\/p>\n As soon as you know the layout of your website, you can begin coding.<\/p>\n As noted earlier, you may choose to use a CMS like\u00a0WordPress to do this. If so, you can use preexisting building blocks or even templates to create your site, but bear in mind that your website won\u2019t be as unique as it would be if you built it from scratch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Whatever you do, don\u2019t just grab a template and change the words on the page. Templates should serve as a starting point, so you want to modify them into something new and original to help create a unique design.<\/p>\n If you decide to hand-code it, you\u2019ll likely find yourself using three\u00a0web development tools\u00a0\u2014\u00a0HTML, CSS (cascading style sheets), and\u00a0JavaScript. All three of these programs enable you to build a website out of code, with HTML forming the building blocks and the other two tools enhancing the basic code.<\/p>\n Once your initial coding is done, you\u2019ll want to start optimizing other elements of your back-end, which includes deciding where you\u2019ll host your site and how it will be organized and retrieve data.<\/p>\n The process of back-end optimization is detailed and technical, but here are a few of the things you can expect to do:<\/p>\n Back-end optimization is a very important step in the development process, particularly if users can make purchases on your site \u2014\u00a0the data they enter has to be stored somewhere.<\/p>\n After building the back end of your site, the natural next step is to move on to the front end. That means setting up the part of your site that users will see when they visit it \u2014 the wallpaper and countertops to your website\u2019s house.<\/p>\n If you use a CMS, you essentially skip right to this step, selecting color schemes and moving elements around on the page instead of coding your site. On the other hand, if you code from scratch, you must build your code first and then add elements to your website.<\/p>\n Some common front-end elements include:<\/p>\n When you build your website, make your site user-friendly, and brand yourself\u00a0visually during this step.<\/p>\n With all the above steps completed, all that\u2019s left for you to do is launch your site! Of course, you\u2019ll want to run some tests to verify that everything on it is working properly first. But once you\u2019re sure everything\u2019s in order, you can make it public.<\/p>\n From there, you can continue updating and reoptimizing to help your site rank better in search and drive better results for your business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the 21st century, having a website is just part of running a business. Your website is where users discover, learn about, engage with, and buy from you. And it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emsdigitalmedia.com.np\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What is the difference between web development and web design?<\/h2>\n
Why is web development important?<\/h2>\n
Components of web development<\/h2>\n
Website terminology<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Hand coding vs. CMS<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The web development process<\/h2>\n
1. Develop a plan<\/strong><\/h4>\n
2. Create a sitemap<\/strong><\/h4>\n
3. Purchase a domain name<\/strong><\/h4>\n
4. Build your backend<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"Website](\"https:\/\/www.webfx.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/wix-website-template-options.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
5. Build your front-end<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
6. Launch your website<\/strong><\/h4>\n