Web Development vs Web Design

Web development is the creation of software that makes your website work - makes it actually DO something rather than just sit there and look pretty. Without that software all web sites would be full of simple, static pages.  They'd be the same each time you looked at them and once opened they wouldn't change and you couldn't interact with them - no forms, no menus, no slide shows, no videos.  Facebook and Twitter would be impossible, as would Amazon, Ebay and Google.

Client Software Makes Websites Fun

Viewing a website involves two computers, the server - out there on the web, and the client - your computer.  Websites can run software on both of them.

Client side software reacts to things you do - it lets developers bring web pages to life with interactive slide shows, folding or 'concertina' items, menus that drop down or pop out as you look at them.  Client side software is typically used in small pieces at a time, known as 'scripts', and most of it is written in the Javascript language, often with a powerful add-on called jQuery.

Server Software Does the Heavy Lifting

Because it runs on the web server, server side software is relatively secure and can handle sensitive information like passwords and prices and reveal them only to authorised users.  It can be trusted to handle resource bookings without giving away who else has booked you and when.  Server side software can handle databases of millions, even billions of records so it can run on-line banking sites, search engines and 'e-government' - much of the UK tax system is now on-line and run by server side software.

Server side software is written in a number of programming languages including PHP, ASP, Java, C# ('see-sharp') and C/C++.  We use the PHP language and MySQL databases to write most of our software.

Case Studies

Pragmatic Tracker - patient outcome monitoring

Raaz Indian Grill - on-line restaurant booking

Panpage - website content management system