Website Programming

Truecast utilizes web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL that are both proven and practical. I can build templates for database driven sites allowing you to easily update the information to be displayed with the formatting determined by the template.

Website programming refers to the writing, markup, and coding involved in building a website based on a design. The programming process takes the textual, graphical, video, and audio content and makes it look and work the way it was designed to. There are two sides to website programming, a client site and a server side. Truecast uses both sides to create a complete user experience. The server side deals primarily with interacting with a database and combining the different page parts to produce a final HTML page sent to the browser for display.

HTML, which stands from HyperText Markup Language, is the standard language for building web pages and web interfaces. The text and media is marked up using tags to give the content structure. HTML provides structural semantics using headings, paragraphs, lists, links, sections, forms, headers, footers, and general use containers. Browsers do not show the HTML tags on the page, but it is used them to interpret the content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is the maintainer of the HTML standards. HTML 5.1 is the newest standard as of November 2016. It has added new tags and tag properties.

CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets, describes how HTML tags and content are to be displayed on screens and paper. CSS is a language for describing the layout and characteristics of elements on a web page. This includes colors, borders, backgrounds, shadows, visibility, some animations, layout, and fonts. CSS makes it fast to make changes to the entire website. CSS styles can be stored in external files that can be cached allows the browser to only download it once making the site pages load faster. CSS can also be included right in with the HTML tags on a page. It allows a web page to adapt the layout and characteristics to different sized screens or even printers. The separation of HTML from CSS makes it much easier to maintain websites, use style sheets with pages, and customize pages to different screen sizes. This separation of structure from presentation allows for faster site building and makes them more maintainable.

The client side programming deals mainly with markup of content, formatting/styling of that content, and browser scripting. Content markup is about adding structure to text and other media on the page. Formatting and styling is about sizing, coloring, adding lines, borders, etc. to the content to make it look just how it was designed. Browser scripting provides making things happen on the page when the user clicks on a button or other control. It can ask the server for some new piece of information and display it on the page without the page needing to be reloaded. This is technology is called AJAX which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX is a new technique for creating better, faster, and more interactive websites. Conventional websites transfer information to and from the server using synchronous requests. This means you fill out a form, hit submit, and a new page loads with new information from the server. When doing it with AJAX, when you click submit, the client side scripting language JavaScript, will make a request to the server, the server runs some server side code, when JavasScript on the page interprets the response from the server, and updates the current page.

Server side programming deals with coding in a server side programming language such as PHP, Ruby, Java, C#, Go, Hack, and many others. Server side languages are very powerful and complex. They generally run faster than JavaScript code can run. Server computers are almost always faster computers than desktop, laptops, tablets, and phones are so servers are used to run the majority of the complex code. Server side programming is often used to provide the customized website for the user. This code can assemble client characteristics and information and send them to the user. This code can authenticate users, return authorized content, process user content submissions, and much more. Server side scripting also allows website developers to hide their source code whereas client side scripting is all sent to the users browser and is available for them to read and copy.

MySQL, which stands for My Structured Query Language and pronounced (My Sequel or My S.Q.L), is the most popular open source database system in the world. It is a relational database management system which allows websites to store vast amounts of data, sort, and access it very quickly. It has proven performance, reliability, and easy to use. MySQL is the leading database choice for web-based applications. It is used by high profile web companies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yahoo! and many more. Oracle is the company that maintains and develops this open source database solution.