Web Site Basics - The Backend

A Web site is dependent on its "hidden" features: the backend equipment, systems, and programs that constitute the site's infrastructure and building blocks. There are several key elements of backend Web site components. At the ground level is the server software, the tools that are involved in actually hooking up a computer system to the Internet—that is, the software that turns a series of computer files into a Web site. Servers are generally built on the UNIX programming language. Most advanced Web sites also utilize databases, of which there are numerous varieties. Databases allow for quicker updating and organization of Web materials, and are generally a useful tool for constructing highly detailed Web content.

To place documents on the Web, pages, graphics, and all other sources referred to in the site's pages must be uploaded to the remote host computer that's connected to the Web. The host may be an Internet service provider (ISP), a Web hosting service, or even the company or organization itself, if it can afford the resources. Once a site is ready to go online, the company, organization, or individual must determine a URL for the site that hasn't already been taken by another site. Most companies try to make their URL as easy to remember—and as logically close to the company name—as possible. For example, a company known as My Company would likely try to register mycompany.com or my-company.com so as to create the least possible confusion in their customers' minds.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the traditional lingua franca of the World Wide Web. HTML consists of hundreds of tags that tell Web browsers how to read the information contained in the document, including the layout and font, the setting of hyperlinks, the referencing of graphics, and so on. By the 2000s, HTML was increasingly augmented by more advanced languages such as eXtensible markup language (XML) and eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), the latter of which was built ostensibly as a bridge between HTML and XML. XML was quickly emerging as the standard language for e-commerce, particularly in the business-to-business realm. XML is a metalanguage that allows programmers to more intricately define what the tags mean and how they interact with the data they define. While there are scores of other markup languages, the safest route for Web designers is to stick to the established standards—such as HTML, XHTML, XML, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)—that have been approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the primary organization overseeing the World Wide Web's development. Designers can test their programming and Web authoring for compatibility with these standards at a number of free online validation sites.