Website Technologies

Once you have determined your target audience the next step in the development of a website is to assess the website technologies available and which are suitable for your target audience.

Before you can determine which technologies are suitable for the website you need to understand some basic concepts of the internet.

Internet Basics What is the Internet?, IP Address, URLs, Servers and Clients, Server-side Scripts and Client-side Scripts, What is a Browser?, HTML - HyperText Markup Language, Web Page

More Internet Basics HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol, DNS - Domain Name Server, Web Server, Secure Server - Secure Web Server, Web Host - Web Hosting, FTP - File Transfer Protocol

What Website Technologies Does the Website Need?

The type of website you are building and the targeted audience chosen will determine the website technologies required.

Ecommerce Websites

Ecommerce websites would have to consider website technologies such as shopping carts, secure servers, customer payments and shipping issues.

Are you planning on using a third party shopping cart or hosting your own shopping cart?

How are visitors going to pay for the merchandise? Does the web host have secure servers or will a third party service be required?

How is shipping to be handled?

Website Communication Technologies

Website communication technologies would include email, auto responders, email forwarding, mailing lists, guestbooks, forums, bulletin boards, chatrooms and/or blogs.

• How many e-mail accounts do you require?
• Are auto responders needed?
• Is email forwarding needed?
• Will there be a mailing list?

Should the website include a guestbook, forum, chat room or blog or use a third party for these features?

Advanced Website Technologies

Advanced website technologies may be at an additional cost. The type of database, web programming type and whether Front Page extensions are used can all affect the cost of website hosting.

Is a database needed? Which, SQL or MySQL?

Are you planning to use ASP, PHP or some other web programming feature?

Are you planning to use client side scripts?

Are Front Page Extensions required?

Website Graphics

If the website is going to use a lot of images then a large amount of webspace will be required. Images use a lot of bandwidth so having the technology to reduce/optimize images does come into play.

What type of website graphics are going to be needed? Flash? Animated gifs? Static graphics? Do you have your existing graphics (logo etc.) available in a suitable format for the web?

If using Flash or some other media requiring special software is the target audience going to already have the software installed on their machine? Will there be different versions of the media for the different types of software? These extra website technologies require more website hosting space and bandwidth.

Webspace Host Operating System

Once the website technologies are decided on you will have to select a web host that has the correct type of operating system for those technologies. Technologies such as PHP and MYSQL usually are used on a Lynx operating system. ASP, SQL, .Net and Front Page extensions are Microsoft specific technologies and are usually offered on Windows based servers. Other servers can offer Microsoft specific technologies but it is reccommended to stick with Windows servers if using Microsoft specific technologies for better performance.

What operating system will your hosting company need to have?

Can the website technologies chosen be run on the operating system offered?

All of the above influence the type of audience you target and can affect your hosting costs.

The next few posts will cover different types of website technologies. This post will act as an index so be sure to bookmark it for future reference.

Internet Basics

Internet Basics

Before you can determine which technologies are suitable for the website you need to understand some basic concepts of the internet. What is the Internet?, IP Address, URLs, Servers and Clients, Server-side Scripts and Client-side Scripts, What is a Browser?, HTML - HyperText Markup Language, Web Page

More Internet Basics

Continued from Internet Basics. HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol, DNS - Domain Name Server, Web Server, Secure Server - Secure Web Server, Web Host - Web Hosting, FTP - File Transfer Protocol

Server Side and Client Side Scripts

Server Side Scripts

Server side scripts, as the name suggests, run from the web server. The browser sends a request, the script is run on the server and the results are sent back to the browser.

Client Side Scripts

Client side scripts are scripts the browser runs on the visitor's computer. There is no communication between the web server and the browser. All the script processing is done via the browser.

Using Databases - Website Databases

Including a database for use with a web site will require that the web hosting company supports the type of database selected.

A database can be used for user login, product cataloges, image galleries, mailing lists, just about anything.