Anatomy of a Web Page
How some of the terminology fits together
An informational presentation by Widgeon Web Design.
The server
Put simply, a server is a computer that stores, processes, and retrieves files and data across a network.
Typically, only very large organizations require the resources of an entire server (or more than one server) all to themselves, so website hosting companies offer alternative solutions such as "shared hosting" and "Virtual Private Servers" (VPS) which allow a single server computer to act as the web server for many websites. Such servers are typically co-located in high-security, temperature-controlled data centers with redundancies and backups to safeguard data integrity. Historically, these data centers have often been referred to as "server farms;" but lately, integrated networks of server farms are being re-branded as "the cloud" by marketing people who like to preserve some mystique in their industry.
Our website coding is optimized for the most standard server setup, with Apache Server software running on a Linux operating system. This setup is popular because it is open source, which keeps costs low; and because it is stable. According to industry statistics tracker Netcraft, Apache Server is the most popular web server software in the world.
The MySQL Database
A database stores information. The database software enhancees the efficiency of data storage, processing, and retrieval, providing your web server with powerful information processing capabilities. MySQL is a very popular open-source database software system; it comes standard on most popular website hosting platforms. Many websites use a Content Management System (CMS) that stores the website's HTML content in a database system. For example, an e-commerce website might use a database to store the price and weight of its items; or a simple blog site stores the text for all the blog entries in its database.
<?PHP
PHP can access files on the server, and information stored in the database, as well as a number of user-submitted and server environmental variables. PHP provides access to server-side scripting resources. PHP is an interpreted scripting language that can be programmed either procedurally or objectively. PHP code is stored on the server and parsed at runtime.
So in other words, PHP is used to power dynamic websites. It reads, writes, and interacts with any number of other networked system components, and uses the result to output HTML (or other data) to the user's web browser. Your new website by Widgeon Web Design is certain to implement PHP, because a PHP-based customer contact form comes standard on all new website projects.
<HTML />
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the main substance of a web page. A web page's HTML defines the basic structure of its content; and in most cases the HTML also includes the actual text content. In addition to the text content itself, the HTML also specifies which other resources should be utilized to display the completed page: including photos, background images, stylesheets, active scripts, embedded objects, or internal frames that open up a window to a different page or script.
HTML5 is the latest web page markup standard to be widely adopted by the web standards community. So new that many of its best features have yet to be implemented in most of the major browsers, this latest interation will provide web professionals with more semantic markup options through the introduction of a variety of new elements, attributes, and methods.
CSS{ }
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) determine the size, position, and background images of various page elements. Through the use of CSS for presentation, designers can construct semantic markup for their content, separating style from substance, as it were. The greatest benefit of CSS is that it provides consistency. It is a basic premise of marketing that the brand should be presented to the target audience in a consistent manner, to reinforce brand image and brand associations. CSS takes the guesswork out of presentation consistency, even across a large, dynamic website. The emerging CSS3 standards still enjoy only limited browser support, but offer many intriguing possibilities for the near future of web design.
JavaScript( );
JavaScript is a client-side scripting language, meaning it runs actively in the visitor's web browser. JavaScript can be used to change the displayed content in real time based on user actions or other conditions, and may even query a server API in the background, via AJAX. For example, the popular, publicly-licensed jQuery libary of cross-browser JavaScript methods was implemented by Widgeon Web Design to create the animations on this web page.
Flash
Flash animation uses a special filetype and a proprietary scripting language. The Flash element or movie is displayed by a free plugin that runs in the website visitor's web browser. According to Adobe's own statistics, the Flash player is enabled in 99% of all desktop users's browsers. Though Flash presently enjoys support on only about 36% of smartphone devices, the near-ubiquitous support for Flash on desktop operating systems makes it a popular choice for creative, animated, and dynamically responsive websites.