Websites & The Domain Name System

So, websites consist of one or many documents, graphics and resources that are stored on a computer (server) in a geographical location. These resources are then delivered to a piece of software called a browser which runs on an electronic device such as a computer or mobile phone. the website is created using a programming language which is interpreted by the browser, which then displays the website for the visitor to view. The Domain Name system provides easy to remember names in order for quick searching and retrieval of the websites.

Programming Website Code

The programming languages, that are used to create the website, are written as lines of code which when completed, create the website design. This process can be very time consuming and involve thousands and thousands of lines of code in order to complete the process. Programming languages are not a new phenomenon and have become highly developed into the code in use today. However, the production of a complete website using these programming skills is still quite a task.

Visual Programming Tools

Luckily tools have been developed to make this task easier. There are many so called “visual programming” tools available that ease the burden on the programmer. These visual tools contain assets that have already been coded such as blocks, buttons, forms etc. which can be dragged onto a build template negating the need for the programming of those individual items or tasks. Over the years libraries of code snippets have been created for specific tasks that the programmer can use in order to speed up the coding process. This has developed into the availability of full visual design software that requires little or no programming in order to produce the end result.

Proprietary & Open Source Software

Major software companies worldwide have produced these visual design products over the years, at a cost to the consumer, and communities of programmers have produced their own similar versions of these products at no cost to the consumer. These latter products have been labelled “Open Source”. Unlike proprietary company software, these Open-Source products are free to use under the Open-Source Initiative which allows free use, free distribution and access to all the programming code. There are many of these Open-Source products available for website design and hosting, the most notable being the Apache Web Server software which powers/host approximately 70% of Internet Websites.

Open-Source products such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and many others, provide free full website design systems that require little or no programming from the user. With so called WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) full screen editing which displays changes that you make in real time, the user can drag blocks, buttons, images, code etc. directly onto the page. With pre-built page and layout templates the non-programmer can quickly build a nice functional website. These websites can be improved with Plugins which increase the functionality to allow e-commerce websites, community websites, business portals and much more. Mind you, with all that said and done, there is a learning curve with all these products.

Our Open Source CMS of Choice

Here at Tay IT in Perth Scotland we promote and use WordPress, which runs over 40% of the worlds websites as of December 2021, as our go to Content Management System. If you would like more information, then give us a call.