Web development as an industry...

Since the commercialization of the web,
web development has been a growing
industry . The growth of this industry is
being driven by businesses wishing to
use their website to sell products and
services to customers.
For tools and platforms, the public can
use many open source systems to aid
in web development. A popular
example, the LAMP ( Linux, Apache ,
MySQL , PHP ) stack is available for
download online free of charge. This
has kept the cost of learning web
development to a minimum. Another
contributing factor to the growth of the
industry has been the rise of easy-to-
use WYSIWYG web-development
software, most prominently Adobe
Dreamweaver , WebDev . Using such
software, virtually anyone can relatively
quickly learn to develop a very basic
web page. Knowledge of HyperText
Markup Language ( HTML) or of
programming languages is still required
to use such software, but the basics
can be learned and implemented
quickly with the help of help files,
technical books, internet tutorials, or
face-to-face training.
An ever growing set of tools and
technologies have helped developers
build more dynamic and interactive
websites. Further, web developers now
help to deliver applications as web
services which were traditionally only
available as applications on a desk-
based computer. This has allowed for
many opportunities to decentralize
information and media distribution.
Examples can be seen with the rise of
cloud services such as Dropbox , Adobe
Creative Cloud and Microsoft's Office
365 . These web services allow users to
interact with applications from many
locations, instead of being tied to a
specific workstation for their
application environment.
Examples of dramatic transformation
in communication and commerce led
by web development include e-
commerce. Online auction-sites such
as eBay have changed the way
consumers find and purchase goods
and services. Online retailers such as
Amazon.com and Buy.com (among
many others) have transformed the
shopping and bargain-hunting
experience for many consumers.
Another good example of
transformative communication led by
web development is the blog . Web
applications such as WordPress and
Movable Type have created easily
implemented blog-environments for
individual web sites. The popularity of
open-source content management
systems such as Joomla! , Drupal ,
XOOPS , and TYPO3 and enterprise
content management systems such as
Alfresco and eXo Platform have
extended web development's impact at
online interaction and communication.
Web development has also impacted
personal networking and marketing.
Websites are no longer simply tools for
work or for commerce , but serve more
broadly for communication and social
networking . Websites such as
Facebook and Twitter provide users
with a platform to communicate and
organizations with a more personal
and interactive way to engage the
public.
Practical web development
Basic
In practice, many web developers will
have basic interdisciplinary skills /
roles, including:
Graphic design / web design
Information architecture and
copywriting /copyediting with web
usability , accessibility and search
engine optimization in mind
The above list is a simple website
development hierarchy and can be
extended to include all client side and
server side aspects. It is still important
to remember that web development is
generally split up into client side
coding, covering aspects such as the
layout and design, and server side
coding, which covers the website's
functionality and back-end systems.
Testing
Main article: Software Testing
Organizations that build websites
typically have a test site (a.k.a. staging
site) where a new website is tested to
make sure everything works correctly
before it goes live on the World Wide
Web . After a staging site has been
tested and found to be working
properly it can be launched to the
public. A production site, also called a
live site, is usually run a separate
server from the staging area. Running
the production site and staging server
allows developers to make changes to
their site and test changes before
applying them in real time.
The extent of testing varies greatly
between organizations, developers, and
individual sites or applications.
Security considerations
Web development takes into account
many security considerations, such as
data entry error checking through
forms, filtering output, and encryption..