What is Website Design and Development?

Many people confuse website design and development. However, website design and development are not the same thing. Let’s understand with a simple example. Suppose you are building a house. How the house will look, which side the windows will be on, what color the walls will be, these are decided as ‘design’.

We call this User Interface and User Experience in web design language. A designer basically creates the design of the website using graphics, layout and color theory.

On the other hand, ‘development’ is like the electrical wiring or plumbing inside the house. That is, how the site will work, what will happen when you click on a button, where the information will be stored when someone fills out a form, all this is development. Development is again of two types. Front-end development and back-end development.

Front-end is what we see in the browser. For example, writing style, images, animations, etc. The back-end is what works behind the server. For example, database, login system, etc.

How to build a website?

To build any professional website, you need to do three things. Without these, it is not possible to make a website live. These tasks or steps are discussed in detail below.

Buying a domain name

A domain is the address of your website. For example: yourname.com. The shorter and more memorable the domain name, the better. Here, there is a domain name and an extension. yourname is the domain name and .com is the extension. Extensions come in different types. For example, .com/.net/.co/.xyz/.info/.org/.store/.me etc. .com is the most popular extension, but if you want, you can also take .net, .org or .bd domains for our country.

You need to take a domain extension based on the category of your website. For portfolio or international websites, .com domain is the choice of everyone. Again, .me domain can also be taken for portfolio. On the other hand, .store or .com domain is a good choice for e-commerce website. You have to enter the website by typing the name of a website. So, you have to buy a domain name at the beginning.

Get a hosting service

Hosting is where your website’s text, images, or videos will be stored on the internet. You can rent hosting from different providers on a monthly or annual basis. It is better to get shared hosting in the beginning, because its price is low. When the number of visitors to the site increases, you can later upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server.

The domain term is for 1 year. However, if you want, you can buy a domain for multiple years and a maximum of 10 years. On the other hand, hosting can be purchased for one month. If you want, you can buy a hosting plan for multiple years. After buying a domain, you need to connect it to hosting.

Platform setup

After connecting the domain and hosting, you need to decide how you will build the website. If you want, you can use a CMS (such as WordPress, Joomla, Shopify) or you can build it by coding. In the case of coding, you can build a website with PHP or Python.

It is very easy to create a website using any CMS or content management service. You can easily install these CMS from hosting. Currently, the most popular CMS is WordPress. However, Shopify is currently becoming very popular for e-commerce websites. The method of creating a website with CMS and custom coding is discussed below.

What kind of website is needed for some tasks

It is not possible to do all the tasks with one website. If the purpose is different, different websites are needed. For example, if you want to create a showcase of your skills or tasks, you need a portfolio website. Again, a blogging website is needed to write about any topic.

On the other hand, if you want to do business with any product, you will need an e-commerce website. You can see more details about what kind of website is needed for some tasks below:

E-commerce website

Websites that are created to sell any physical or digital product are e-commerce websites. Here, customers can complete orders directly by adding product carts and checkout.

Business/Corporate Website

Every business organization needs a website. This website is created with the contact information of the business organization, current status, type of work, and what work is offered.

Portfolio Website

When a website is created about a person’s skills, previous experience of working with which organizations, it is called a portfolio website. People working in various IT sectors, including freelancers, create portfolio websites.

News Portal

The websites that media houses have their own are called news portal websites. They publish various types of daily news on these websites. For example, CNN, Al Jazeera, Amar Desh, Channel 24, etc. websites.

Blog Website

Websites where writing is done on various topics are blog websites. For example, healthcare or skin care, ways to earn money online, various blog websites related to computers and the Internet. Writing is done on these websites on specific topics.

Social Media Websites

These include websites where users can write about various topics and communicate with each other, such as various social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter). There are different types of social media websites all over the world.

How to create a WordPress website

It takes much less time and money to create a WordPress website than creating a custom coding website. Currently, about 43% of the websites on the Internet are built with WordPress. WordPress is basically a content management system or CMS, where ready-made themes and plugins can be used.

To create a website with WordPress, you need a domain and hosting. If you have purchased a domain and hosting, you need to connect them. Then WordPress can be installed on the domain.

To connect the domain, we will add the nameserver of the hosting to the nameserver of the domain. Then the domain and hosting will be connected directly. In addition, domain and hosting can also be connected using Cloudflare.

Once connected, you have to go to hosting. Usually, the Softaculous option is given in the Cpanel of all hosting. After logging in to Cpanel, we will find that option. Then, select the domain and enter username and password there and install WordPress.

However, while installing WordPress, SSC Certificate must be enabled. It can be easily enabled from Cpanel. This way, the website can be installed on https and is secure.

Once WordPress is installed, themes like Generatepress/Astra/OceanWP/Blocksy/Kadence will be installed by going to the Themes option from Appearance. Then, according to the required features of the website, we will go to the Plugins option and install the necessary plugins.

Elementor plugin will be required to design the website. It is possible to design professional quality with it. In addition, you need to use Rank Math/Yoast plugin to do SEO of the website.

It is possible to create blog websites, portfolios, e-commerce websites with WordPress. 

However, creating a professional quality website requires skills. If you are new and want to create a professional quality WordPress website, then contact us.

How to build a custom coding website?

If your needs are a little different, you want a unique feature or you want to build a career as a web developer, then you need to learn programming languages. It starts with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can use these to design the front end of the website. Then you can build the website through back end programming.

How to build a website with PHP?

PHP is one of the oldest and most powerful back-end languages ​​in web development. PHP is the best choice for those who want to build dynamic and database-driven sites. Websites like Facebook or Wikipedia also started with PHP. After learning PHP, you can create a full-fledged blog site, membership portal or custom application using MySQL database.

How to build a website with Python?

Currently, Python has become very popular for its simple syntax and multiple uses. If you want to build a website with Python, you need to learn a framework called Django or Flask. Especially where a lot of data is worked on, artificial intelligence or machine learning is used, Python is unparalleled.

Websites built with it are much more secure and scalable. If you can learn Python, you can easily build a website and host it on hosting and make the website live by connecting the domain.

How to build an e-commerce website?

Building an online shopping website is now much easier. The difference between e-commerce and a simple blog is that there is a ‘payment gateway’, ‘product inventory’ and ‘cart’ system. There are many products on an e-commerce website. Customers can easily cart and checkout any product. You can create an e-commerce website in various ways. These are –

E-commerce website with WordPress

An e-commerce website can be easily created with WordPress. For this, you need to install any e-commerce friendly theme. Then, it needs to be customized as desired. Products can be added by installing the WooCommerce plugin. In addition, product cart and checkout system can be created by creating a funnel using Cartflow.

In Bangladesh, various domestic payment gateways such as SSLCommerz, aamarpay can be installed in WordPress to accept payments through bKash, Nagad or Rocket and payment methods can be set up.

E-commerce website with Shopify

This is a subscription-based platform. Here you don’t have to worry about hosting or technical aspects. You can create a wonderful e-commerce website by dragging and dropping. However, you have to pay a certain amount of fee every month to use Shopify.

Currently, the popularity of creating e-commerce websites with Shopify is increasing. It has numerous features for e-commerce, including the feature of creating websites by dragging and dropping. You can use Shopify to create a professional quality e-commerce site.

Important Things about Website Design and Development

A beautiful design does not mean a lot of features. It is very important to ensure that visitors feel comfortable when they come to the site. In this case, your site should be responsive on all screens, including computers, tablets, and mobiles. Currently, most visitors come from mobile. Therefore, the website must be optimized for mobile.

The website should open within 2-3 seconds. Do not use large-sized images, compress them and upload them. The visitor should easily find what he is looking for from the menu. Avoid using a confusing menu. Use clear and elegant fonts for ease of reading.

A website should be designed and developed keeping these things in mind. Only then will the website be responsive and optimized.

Website Security and SEO

The work is not over after creating a website. It is very important to keep the site secure and reach people. You must add an SSL certificate to your domain. It will have ‘HTTPS’ written before the site link and will show a padlock symbol in the browser. This keeps the site safe from hackers. Currently, free SSL certificates are provided with hosting.

In addition, Search Engine Optimization is required to get visitors from Google. Using the right keywords in the content, giving ‘Alt Text’ to images, and optimizing the speed of the website are the initial steps of SEO. By doing these tasks, you can not only secure the website, but also bring visitors to the website from various search engines including Google.

Conclusion

You can easily create a website and make it live by purchasing a domain and hosting. In addition, websites can be created using various platforms for free. Websites can be created in much less time and at a lower cost using CMS. However, creating a website by custom coding takes more time and costs a little more.

However, creating a website by custom coding can be more secure and customized. If you follow the method discussed in this post, you can create a website at home by yourself. However, if you cannot create a website yourself, you can contact with Trust Soft BD they can help you to build your website Professionally.