The Simple and Complex Process of Website Development

Software / March 26, 2025 / Updated April 07, 2025

The Simple and Complex Process of Website Development

Below is a document describing the easy ways to develop a website and the difficult way to develop a website. This was an essay written in college for an English class. The goal was to describe a technical process in an appropriate format. Most essays follow the APA or MLA format. If you have issues viewing the PDF on the website, you can access it below with the link.

The Simple and Complex Process of Website Development

How anyone can create a website.
Created by Evan Vicidomini, Page 1 – 25 March 2024

About this Guide

This is a guide for anyone that wants to create a website. A website is defined as a page displayed online to show information about a person, organization, or business. It can be used to make money or for posting a blog. There are many other uses for websites and many different ways to create them.

There is the easy way, which uses a service that is already created to host and to make websites without any computer programming. Then there are hard coding websites. To achieve this, many different languages must be implemented to provide the user interface, the style, and the functionality respectively. The goal of this guide is to provide information on how to create websites for any purpose.

This image and information is sourced from Coursera, a website for free certifications and courses on technical topics.

Primary Audience

The main audience is for someone looking to promote themselves or start looking into web development. Specifically, this can be for a business owner, a blogger, or for a design and development student or software engineering student.

This guide is targeted towards the average person who has no experience in website development, college students studying this or something similar as a major, or advanced and talented developers looking for easier ways to create a website for a business or for themselves.

Introduction to Website Creation

This is an example of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which is the primary language for creating websites. When creating a website, there are easy ways to begin and hard ways to complete it. Each method of website design and development has pros and cons.

Firstly, there are services that can be used to make hosting and designing a website fast and simple for everyone. Some services include WordPress and Wix. They make it easy because there is little to no hard coding, and they offer the user a way to host their website for cheap.

On the other hand, designing a website from scratch can be a challenge. The first language is HTML, the basic skeleton. Then there is CSS, used for style. Lastly, JavaScript controls the functionality. All information is stored on a server. Each language is usually stored in a separate file.

Frameworks like Microsoft’s .NET, Visual Studio, and others provide powerful options for building websites with high functionality and security.

WordPress

This is the WordPress homepage. This is used for navigating through website pages and features.

By far the most popular web hosting service on the internet, WordPress is used to host millions of websites. WordPress has free and paid versions, and it is very easy to navigate and learn how it works.

Founded in 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg, WordPress began as a tool for people with little to no technical background. Today, it's trusted by many institutions and companies. It takes time and dedication to learn, even if it's easier than coding from scratch.

Pages such as home, about, contact, and blog can be easily created. Paid plans include custom domain names and plugins which are essential for success. A domain name and some advertising are important for monetization.

Domain Name and Hosting a Website

This image and information is sourced from Geeks for Geeks.

A domain name is text assigned to a website hosted from an IP address. It has four parts: protocol (HTTP/HTTPS), subdomain (www), domain name (like Google), and TLD (.com, .net, etc.).

Using services like WordPress and GoDaddy, domain names and hosting can be managed easily for individuals or small businesses. Larger companies often require custom and secure solutions with hard coding.

Hard Coding Websites

Here is another example of HTML code with paragraphs, containers, and JavaScript. This was sourced from my IDE during a project.

Hard coding websites is more complex and suited for software engineering or computer science majors. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the core technologies. Knowing them opens job opportunities in tech.

Frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, ASP.NET Core, Angular, Spring Boot (Java), and Flask help speed up development. These are powerful tools for building professional-grade websites.

Conclusion

Designing websites can be fun and difficult. Anyone can do it with determination. Not everyone needs to be a programmer to succeed. Visual design can be enjoyable, while backend development can be frustrating.

Be careful of scams, and always aim to build websites that help, not harm, others.