Web Development (Please login)

There is a huge amount of web development tools. Many of these tools are for experienced software consultants and developers although most can be used by users with limited expertise.

We chose to not supply a list of these software products because we believe your main interest here should be on clearly communicating your specific needs to those software consultants you choose to work with. You may want to discuss with them what software they will use before signing a contract with them. But most importantly, you should ensure that they understand your specific needs. Good communications and planning can greatly enhance productivity.

One rapidly growing and important area of website software development involves the use of SEO (search engine optimization) technology to improve the website's visibility during a search on a search engine (such as Google). Since most search engines use their own ranking algorithms that can frequently change, achieving and maintaining a high rank can be a difficult and time consuming task that requires constant checking and updating.

Information security is another important consideration in website design. With the danger of Internet fraud and user theft constantly lurking, many websites use secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates to ensure the safe transmission of data. One way to tell if a page is secure is to look at its web address. If it starts with https:// (as opposed to the usual http://) then it is a secure page. (The secure page is denoted by the 's'). However, because of system and resource overhead, usually only those pages that deal with confidential information (such as credit cards) are secure.

There are two components to consider in web development: the front end and the back end. The front end of a website is the interface the user sees and contains the text, images and graphics. The back end is logic and database-related and may involve extensive programming depending on the application. As development proceeds, you may find that download speed and ease of use may be more important than flashy elements (such as an introduction screen in Flash or large, graphic displays). Make sure to test your website with a small test audience while still in development. The results may surprise you.

Copyright, The Productivity Institute LLC, 2013.