Startup Guide for Web Development.

This post is focused on explaining the basic terms and ways that are frequently used for web Development. If you are a newbie and wondering about how to start designing your own website or a blog, then read on.

The basic pre-requisite softwares for any web development are
1) PHP ( A programming language for webpages)
2) Apache ( Webserver )
3) MySql ( SQL database to store data )
4) content management system CMS (Optional)

Firstly, you need to install PHP Apache and MySql on your machine wherever you want to host your website. Php is a programming language for the websites. Apache is a webserver that allows a service to run on your machine to parse Http requests. MySql is a database that is used to make databases/tables for your website. It is important that before going onto a live server, some practice is done on local machine to make sure if everything works fine. With Apache service running on your computer, you can run the web pages using
http://localhost/mytestwebsite in your web browser. where mytestwebsite is a folder containing your webpages, placed under /var/www/ directory in Linux systems and C:/inetpub/wwwroot in Windows.
The combination of Apache, MySql and PHP on a Linux machine is also referred as LAMP(Linux Apache MySql PHP), and WAMP (Windows Apache MySql PHP) for Windows machines.

Now, you need to decide what kind of website are you planning to make. the most common possibilites are:
1) you want to make something really fast. The design Doesn't matter. Predefined Templates can be used since there are no commercial or copyright issues involved.
2) You are planning to custom make a website in a particular language i.e Html, PHP, Flash to serve a specific purpose that can otherwise not be achieved using predefined templates.
3) you need to make a website ready as soon as possible and then you may want to include some custom pages later that may have Php or the Html and Javascript. CMS has many plugins available that enable this feature.

A Content Manager sometimes also known as CMS (content management system), allows the simple use of predefined templates where content needs to be put in simple text format in a very easy interactive interface that itself runs inside the browser, just like email composer. The most famous CMS available are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. They automatically embed the input text inside the PHP/HTML pages. These CMS also take care of all the security loopholes making your website less prone to hacks. But they have a drawback. Inserting a custom PHP or HTML code is difficult for the starters. But the biggest advantage is that anyone can make a website with no prior knowledge of any Web based programming language.
Many tutorials can be found on www.youtube.com that will give a clear demo of how to install a CMS and use its features.


Almost all of the website hostings on severs come with a cPanel hosting where a user has access to a control panel to perform the administrative tasks for the website, like creating databases, managing user accounts, web page upload/updation etc... This must not be confused with a CMS. A cPanel is a set of tools that let you perform the administrative tasks for your whole of website. It deals with global variables of your website, while a CMS only maintains the CONTENT of your webpages. A CMS like Wordpress or Joomla can be installed on the server to be used, with the help of cPanel options.

If you want to make the website from scratch using the basla, CMS, cPanel, ic programming language, the webpages can be made and stored in the web dictory as told above. When the pages are ready on your local machine, they can simply be sent onto the server via FTP to make website accessible to everyone.