When you make a website there are various different
programming languages that you might encounter. Granted if you run a business
then there is a good chance that it won’t be you at all who is making the site,
and it may instead be a web design company. However in this case it is still
useful to have a good grasp of what the various kinds of code are when
programming a page, and of what they are each capable of. This way you can
better understand the jargon that your web developers use, and can make more realistic
requests regarding your site.
Here there are few of some languages that web development
utilizes, to give you something of a crash course.
HTML: This is the most basic form of ‘programming’ for
websites and isn’t really programming at all in the traditional sense as there
is little input/output involved. HTML instead is used as a code for browsers to
know how to display the code, text and images, and to this end it is more a
matter of things like ‘next line’ or ‘link’.
CSS: CSS is a slightly more dynamic way of laying out your
sites. This allows you to make elegant tables and to have nice rounded boxes
places anywhere around your site which in turn is practically necessary for
modern web design. At the same time because there is normally one ‘style.css’
file which all other pages refer to, this means that the whole site can be
changed by altering a few lines rather than changing every page individually.
JavaScript: JavaScript is a pared down version of Java which
in turn is similar to C. In other words then this is a ‘proper’ programming
language with logic statements which allows you to do much more complex things
like Math, Quizzes, Mail forms and more. To run JavaScript a visitor has to
have the Java plugin installed on their device, but the vast majority of
computers, phones and tablets will have this installed these days so it’s
relatively safe for you to use.
PHP: PHP is a unique programming language in that it
operates ‘sever side’. What this means is that it doesn’t actually get handled by
your computer, but instead is handled by the server and you just see the
output. This gives it advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that
things can only take place when the page loads, because once the page has
loaded you only get the output and the server will have ‘sent’ that to our
computer. You can get around this though by using cookies and reloading pages
etc, or by combining it with JavaScript. The advantage however is that all
devices the world over will see the code the same because it’s up to your
servers how the code is handled – not the devices viewing them.
At the same time PHP also has access to all the files on
your server and this means that it can be used in order to edit those, delete
them and make new ones. This is what allows someone to upload a profile for
instance, or allows you to edit pages through a UI that you or your web
designer created.
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