How to Learn Web Development 

If you’re a beginner looking for a complete guide on how to learn web development, we can help you achieve your dreams. However, learning web development is not easy, and you need to be patient and constantly update your skills to master it. Whether learning web development is easy or not depends on your interest and dedication to the craft. The more sincere and disciplined you are, the faster you will learn.

Sometimes, beginners get intimidated by the visual elements such as colors, images, and animations on websites. If you’re confused about terms like responsive website and spacing, don’t worry. In this section, you will get a step-by-step guide on how to learn web development quickly.

Before we dive into the guide, it’s important to know about the two basic terms associated with web development: front-end development and back-end development. Both of these processes are deeply connected with the procedure of web development.

What is Front-End Development?

Front-End Development emphasizes what clients say about the webpage; rather, it is a client-side development. Front-End Development is carried out by front-end developers, who have regular work dealing with code analysis, design, debugging, and at the same time ensuring that users face seamless experiences while browsing the webpage.

Being a front-end developer, you can manage what people will see on your website. The look, feel, and ultimate design of the website completely depend on the caliber of the front-end developer.

What is Back-End Development?

As a front-end developer, you might not be interested in the work of a back-end developer. But, to some extent, a little knowledge about back-end development can simplify a front-end developer’s job as well.

It is all about server-side development, and developers have to deal with how the site works. Back-end development involves making updates and changes besides monitoring the site functionality.

Back-end development comprises three parts: Server, Application, and Database.

How to Learn Web Development?

Now that you have an idea about front-end and back-end development, where front-end deals with the look and feel of the website, and back-end deals with updates and server-side changes, let’s discuss how to learn web development.

Front-End Programming Languages

Nevertheless, to say that front-end work requires you to master some programming languages as well; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the most popular front-end programming languages with wide applications in front-end development.

The importance of front-end programming languages:

1. HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is the most important language for web development and the first language we need to learn. HTML defines the structure of the website, such as headings, paragraphs, images, tables, forms, lists, and more.

The present version of HTML is a lot different from the one we used earlier. The latest version of HTML is HTML5, which is more powerful than the previous version. In HTML5, lots of new features are added, such as support for video and audio. With the help of HTML, you can create the structure of your website. To learn HTML5, use w3schools; it is the best place to learn web development technology.

2. CSS

Now that we’ve learned how to create a website structure, to style the HTML element, we have to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). With the help of CSS, we can add colors, change the font style, and create animation, and transitions. We can style our website as we like. CSS is a very powerful technology to style HTML elements.

Just like HTML has grown over the past few years and changed to HTML5, CSS has also undergone the same change. The latest version of CSS is CSS3. To learn CSS3, use w3schools.com.

3. JavaScript

JavaScript is used to add functions to the website and to create web-based applications. Examples include creating an interactive form, a video player, and a button that can perform certain functions such as a like button on Facebook, and a subscribe button on YouTube.

You can learn HTML and CSS within one week, but JavaScript will take some time to learn. Indeed, learning JavaScript is not easy, but the basic things of this language can help you enough to do your task. Moreover, basic knowledge of JavaScript will help in your web development journey.

4. Bootstrap

Do you remember the term responsive that has been discussed earlier in this article? Well, responsive websites are referred to as those websites that change the elements’ alignments and spacing for the screen size of the device. Now, the technology involved in this purpose is called Bootstrap, making it easy to make a responsive website.

Bootstrap is a front-end framework that collaborates with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to help you design a responsive website for various devices such as laptops, and tablets.

Back-End Programming Languages

Back-end programming languages make the website dynamic and are very different from static sites. In the case of dynamic sites, the content changes very often, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, etc., which are examples of dynamic websites.

1. PHP

Nowadays, it is equally important to focus on the backend development of the web page called the server. In order to code on the server side, you must have a server-side scripting language, and that is PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor) which can help in doing so.

Apart from PHP, some of the other server-side scripting languages worth mentioning here are JSP and ASP.NET. However, it is the PHP language that is very easy to learn and utilizes the server-side scripting language here.

PHP, being a server-side scripting language, requires a server to function. To learn PHP, you don’t need to have a server; you can learn it on your local computer. There are a lot of tools in the market that will help to run PHP codes flawlessly on your local computer.

Here are some tools that can help you to run PHP on your local computer:

  • WAMP: Compatible with a Windows machine
  • LAMP: Compatible with a Linux machine
  • XAMP: Compatible with any operating system

2. MySQL

Now, once you’ve mastered the server side, you have to work with databases. The popular one to work with databases is MySQL (Structured Query Language). MySQL is the best open-source database management software available in the industry.

With the help of MySQL, you will get the benefit of storing, organizing, and managing a large amount of information in a software application. From my personal experience, I will recommend you learn PHP language and ignore ASP and JSP as PHP offers the easiest way to connect with the MySQL database.

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