If you have already begun learning web development, you’ve probably already heard about front-end and back-end programming. But what do they mean? If you are a beginner in the field, it’s hard to know which one is for, so in this text we will look into that. Although the front-end and back-end differ from each other, they are connected just as they are both sides of a coin. The functionality of the website relies on the ability of one party to communicate and work effectively with the other as part of a single and single object. Is the one more important than the other? No. Both play very important development roles. So, where do we start? Let’s throw a coin.
Introduction to front-end development
The front, or frontend of a web site is what you see and interact with your browser. The same is called a “client side”, and includes what the user directly experiences: from text and colors, to buttons, pictures and navigation menus.
Let’s say you’ve decided to start a business. You have opened a specialized bakery and want a professional web site to represent your company to customers and show them where it is located. You may also want to include photos with information about your products. For all this you need front-end technologies.
Front-end languages
These three languages will complete your work:
HTML – the default language for programming that creates and organizes web content to display it on the browser.
CSS – a language that accompanies HTML, and by which you define the style of the content of the website, such as schedules, fonts, etc.
JavaScript – a programming language that is used for more intuitive elements such as dropdown menus, modal windows, and contact forms.
Together, all of these create what is visually presented to you when you visit a web site, whether it’s shopping on the web, reading news, checking e-mail or searching for Google.
In addition to basic front-end languages, you will also find workspaces, such as Bootstrap and Angular, JavaScript libraries, such as jQuery, and CSS extensions, such as Sass and LESS. The list of resources that support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is long. Their goal is to make the code (and the process of its writing) easier to maintain and more organized through a variety of tools and patterns that are compatible with the most common programming languages.
Behind the scene
After several months, your business web site looks great, the bakery is incredibly successful. Now your customers want to buy large quantities of your products for their furry girls, and start making orders online. Well, you decide to open an online store where people can shop. This means your website will need to store information about products, orders, user profiles, credit cards, etc. How will you work with this data so you can deliver pleasures to small, playful friends? There, here the back-end development enters the game.
Introduction to back-end development
For now, what you have is an example of a static web site, and its content does not change much. For static sites, all the necessary information that determines what’s on the site is in the front-end code. Static Web sites are good for businesses, restaurants, portfolios or personal profiles. But if you want to turn your web site into something that your users will want to interact with, you will have to go much deeper into what’s happening behind the scenes.
The back, or back-end (or “server side”) is the part of the web site you do not see. He is responsible for storing and organizing data, and allows everything that is on the client side to work. Vack-end communicates with the front-end, sending and receiving information that needs to be displayed as a web page. Whenever you fill out a contact form, enter a web address, or make an order (or any type of user interaction on a client side), your browser sends a request to the server, which returns information in the form of a front-end code, which the browser can then Interpret and display.
Your new web site will need to have additional back-end components to become a dynamic web application – a web site whose content will change based on what’s in the database, which can be changed through the user input. The form of a static web site does not require a database because its content remains the same.
Adjusting the server side
Your web site needs a database to manage all information about customers and products. The database keeps the content of the web site in a structure that allows you to easily read, organize, edit and save data. Runs a computer at a distance called a server. There are many different databases that are used, for example, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgresSQL, and Oracle.
Your apps the location will still contain a front-end code, but must be built with a language that the database recognizes. Some of the most popular back-end programming languages are Ruby, PHP, Java, .Net, and Python. These programming languages often work on workplaces that simplify the process of web development. Rails, for example, is a workflow written in Ruby. “Ruby on Rails” is a popular technology that helps you build dynamic web applications, making the process much faster.
When all these parts work correctly, customers will be able to visit your website and search, or perform product sub-products. When they write in the search box (on the front-end section), the application will search through all the product data stored in the database (back-end part), and return the relevant information in the form of a front-end code which the browser will display to the user as the requested list.
Open to cooperation!
You now have a dynamic web application that uses front-end and back-end technologies. You use front-end languages to make your website look great and easy to navigate. Behind the scenes, the back-end section holds all front-end components, and allows you to store a history of orders and product details, create secure user accounts, and more. As you can lock yourself, both sides have different roles. But exactly their joint work ultimately defines the user experience, and allows the site to function.
