Web App Development in five stages
Nowadays, building a website is easier than it has ever been. There are countless tutorials and templates available which raise accessibility to functional and good-looking websites. But there is another level of web development beyond HTML5 and CSS (basic functionality and style). It’s something to set a website apart from the competition and stand out: including web apps in your code.
In its essence, a web app is a tool for complex web-based interaction between the server and the user. This opens up the possibility of using cloud storage whilst maintaining desktop (local) functionality. To accompany its great usefulness, some knowledge and a development plan is required. Suggestions for such are listed below.
First Stage – The Concept:
Before you can dive into your script, you need to map out what the goal of your web application is going to be. It doesn’t have to be very specific and anything but complete, as everything is still subject to change at this point. Common uses for web applications might be shopping carts for an online store, online forms and spreadsheets or even video editing and file conversion software.
Second Stage – Functional Frontend and Coloring
First, you need a working script for your website is written in HTML to navigate from one page to another. Additionally, it would be best if you thought about some design aspects. Even though the design is something you care about last in traditional coding, it is advised to start with a baseline of design when it comes to web application development. This design can still be very far from the final result, but colouring certain sections in different colours to visualize where your application will be on your website can be a great guideline.
Third Stage – The Database
There are many possibilities as to what type of database to use for your specific case as each one has reasons to choose and not to choose it. Anyway, for most scenarios, an SQL database is suited nicely. When designing your database, it all comes down to two key aspects that need to be considered: duplicates of information and quality of information. As we have not yet invented a way to store unlimited data, storing the same information twice can lead to all kinds of issues, ranging from lack of storage to confusion due to inconsequent manual changes to one but not the other entry. This lays down a great foundation to build accurate and complete information on top of. This accuracy can be achieved by figuring out your key information and add relations to connected data. If done correctly, you end up with a database that double-checks itself to prevent chaos. In the case of an “order tracker” your database should check if the buyer exists and if he is buying a valid product.
Fourth Stage – The Application
Having set up everything around the program itself, the last step is to write the code to it and insert it into your website. Your code, just like any desktop application, can be written in PHP, Python, JavaScript, or any other programming language you can create a working web app in. This code is then used to connect the database to the user interface you set up previously. When writing your code, your primary focus should be precisely that: streamline the flow of information from your frontend (html5, css3 etc.) to your backend (PHP, python etc.). Your frontend should be able to direct the user from page to page and let them type in their information. From then on, the backend of your website needs to check if there has been information entered if it is valid, and insert it into your database. When your application has not run into any errors, it needs to communicate that event back to your website’s frontend to display the success or error message. Additional tasks can, of course, be added here or as the website starts to gain traction and you get feedback.
Fifth Stage – The Design
Now that you have everything working and communicating, you can go ahead and make it pretty. You can add images, videos, links, animations, or anything else you desire as long as you keep the way of obtaining the information the same. With some minor tweaks, you can enhance the quality of data even more by tracking the time of interaction, without anything changing on the website itself, but rather within your database. Once happy with both functionality and design, upload your files to a service provider and show the world what you have created.
