Introduction to basics of Web Design for beginners

Looking into the growing demand of Web Technologies many IT Freshers are interested to start their career in Web Design. To be a successful Web Designer you required to learn various skills such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript or Jquery. Before jump to getting started with HTML or CSS it’s wise to learn basics of web design & popular terminologies. Read them in below.

HTML (HYPER TEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE) – The basic language for designing the websites is HTML. It is a markup language. Markup language is utilized to organize and format text. It consists of text embedded in different tags. The latest version of HTML is HTML5. Learn about the advanced features of HTML5.

DOMAIN NAME – Domain name identifies a computer on the Internet belonging to particular network. These names appear as a part of a Website’s URL, e.g.jharaphula.com. These types of domains are also called as hostname.

DNS (DOMAIN NAME SERVER) – Web server contains all the web pages. Each web server will have a specific IP address. It is difficult to memorize IP addresses of the entire servers. So we can map the IP address to a particular name. This is known as domain name. The domain name is mapped to the IP address using DNS (Domain Naming Systems). Generally, there will be a DNS server local to each network in the internet.

URL (UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR) – URL is the address of the web pages. For example, the URL for JHARAPHULA is www.jharaphula.com .URL uniquely identifies a resource of web pages. The clients require this URL to access the web pages. URL generally has the following structure:

protocol: //host:port/path

  • Protocol – It indicates a rule that is used for the data transfer (it can be http, ftp, etc.).
  • Host – It contains the IP address or the domain name of the web server which contains the web pages.
  • Port – It specifies the port number using which the http request and http response can be passed. It is optional. The default port number for http is 80. This port number will be used if no other port is mentioned in the URL.
  • Path – It refers to the complete path of the document in the host.

HOME PAGE – This forms the website’s main page. the home page will come up by typing the URL of the website. We can navigate any other web page of that particular web site from the home page.

HTTP (HYPER TEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL) – HTTP defines the rules based upon which the data is transferred between web browser and web server. For accessing the required web page, an http request is sent to the server by the browser. After receiving the http request, the server will send required webpage as http response.

WEB SERVER – Where we deploy our Website to run that is Called Web Server. Web Server always stay Connected with Internet. Every Web Server has a unique address. This is called IP. An IP is the series of 4 numbers in-between 0 to 255. While register a domain name in Control panel we required to specify Web Server address. We use Web Server to store resource. Basically Web Servers are 2 types windows and Linux based. Windows server runs under IIS when Linux server runs under Apache.

Static Web Server – Static content is the data that is present in the file system in the database server

Dynamic Web Server – The program that is run by the web server generates Dynamic content. It is slower compared to static content. Apache, Microsoft IIS are examples of web servers which are commonly used.

WEB BROWSER – To access web which tools we use at Client end this is called Web Browser. Today there are various advanced web browsers available in market such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari or Netscape Navigator. Generally Web Browsers comes with OS. If your machine is running under Window you can get Internet Explorer. Similarly in Linux you have Firefox. Depending upon your requirement you can even download and install Web Browsers.

LAN (LOCAL AREA NETWORK) – A computer network which covers small geographic area like office, home or group of buildings and which is used often to achieve Intranet is called a LAN (Local Area Network). The data is transfer in LAN is much faster when compared to that of internet. LAN is limited to a small geographical region, but internet can be accessed from anywhere in the world. A dedicated telecommunication line is required for internet but it is not needed in LAN. Telecommunication line is required for internet.

WAN (WIDE AREA NETWORK) – Network over a large area is termed as Wide Area Network (WAN). Usually this type of network would be spread across geographical boundaries using routers and public communication links. Internet would be a perfect example for a WAN. Other examples include telephone lines, microwave links and satellite channels.

FTP (FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL) – FTP is a system protocol which will be used for transferring data from one computer to another through a network, like the data that is transferred s over the Internet. The default port for FTP is port no: 21. The two modes of data transfer are ASCII mode and BINARY mode.

1. ASCII MODE – When a file is transferred using an ASCII mode, the individual letters, numbers, and characters are transferred using their ASCII character codes. In this mode which is used as default by most FTP clients, the data will be saved in a text file in the proper format at the receiving machine.

2. BINARY MODE – In “Binary-Type transfer”, the sending machine sends each file bit by bit and as the recipient stores the bit stream as it receives it. FTP has some drawbacks compared to HTTP.

Security Issues – Passwords sent using FTP is in the form of clear text. Clear text is type of text which can not be encrypted. So passwords can seen by anyone who can access the communication channel. This causes a key security issue.

Firewall – It is very difficult to install firewall for data transfer using FTP. This is a major issue in case of access authentication.

Difficulty in programming – FTP programming is difficult compared to that of HTTP. We require a more number of commands to initiate a file transfer.