What It Takes
The people and equipment needed to run a website
Table of Contents
Introduction
There are many components that are required to deploy and maintain a profitable, reliable, and engaging website for your business. These include physical hardware, software, technical personnel, and other various professional services. Selecting the correct parts, personnel, and services can be a rather daunting and confusing task especially if you are not even sure where to begin.
Hopefully with the aide of this article we are able to help you identify and define the role of these parts and how they work together. The Internet and website design can be a mystifying and complicated world, we welcome your comments, suggestions, or questions regarding this article or any other service that Allmar Technologies provides. We would be delighted to provide any additional information. We hope you find this article both informative and educational.
Hardware
Most of the confusion about how the Internet and/or a website works is because people don't understand how everything is connected. Figure 1 shows a typical connection.
Here you can see that a visitor connects to the Internet via their ISP. Their ISP then sends the visitors request out to the Internet, the requested website responds to the visitors request, and the web page is displayed on to the visitors screen.
So from Figure 1 you see that the only piece of hardware that is required to have website is a server that has an Internet connection, a power source and is ready to receive requests from visitors.
Simple enough, but what happens if the website that the visitor requested takes too long to respond to the request or does not respond at all?
The visitor receives an error message that states something to the affect that the requested website was unavailable or was not able to be found. How does this translate into business terms? It means that you just lost a potential customer!
Read more about how Allmar Technologies ensures the readiness of your website.
Software
Software in this context falls into two categories, either server software or development software.
Server software is software that resides on the server. This software's job is to, in some shape or form, help the website perform as expected. Some server software simply responds to the requests of visitors, other software aides in the rendering of the actual web pages, while others add some functionality to the website that enhances the visitor's stay.
Development software is what programmers and designers use to construct your website.
Programmers will typically use an IDE to aide in the code generation of your website. Programmers can also use an IDE to write server software themselves.
Designers primarily use graphic editing software to generate the aesthetic aspects of your website.
Technical Expertise
Thus far we have only mentioned two types of people that are involved in the process of developing your website, programmers and designers. Although these are two very important roles in the development life cycle, these individuals require the support from various other technical personnel in order to perform their duties.
The following is a list of the unsung heroes that are working diligently in the background to ensure the operational integrity and high availability of your website:
- Webmaster
- Database Administrator
- Hardware Technician
- Network Engineer
- Security Officer
Professional Services
While the aforementioned personnel are taking care of the nuts and bolts to ensure that your website is always ready to serve your visitors, there are still others that aide in the development of your website.
These people are equally important in developing and maintaining a successful website. After all, creating a website that is dependable, stable, and reliable is only half the battle. The website still needs to appeal to your visitors.
The following people aide in the front-end development of your website:
- Proofreaders
- Copywriters
- Photographers
- Graphic Designers
- Internet Marketer
- Project Manager
Summary
Hopefully, to some degree, we have cleared the murky water surrounding website design and development. Websites are not created in a vacuum but rather by a collaboration of professionals all relying on each other in order to complete your website project.
Get your website project under way and schedule a free consultation with us today.
