Web Development
There are 2 main types of web site.
- The static site where each page is written and saved as a file on a web server new pages are added and old pages are edited to update links to new pages. This approach is OK for small sites, but due to the overheads of management can be cumbersome when there are a great number of pages to manage. There are tools that will help generate page templates and update multiple pages but this can still become very complex to manage as the page count increases.
- The dynamic site which will run a program on the web server and the output is a web page (this site is an example of this technology). The content is often stored in a database and parameters passed to the web program (from input forms or links and buttons) will determine the type of page that needs to be generated. By using a combination of code that executes in the web browser and also on the server it is possible to produce some very powerful systems.
To the end user, the actual technology is not important as long as they can read / shop / discuss, but to the site owner the possibillities are endless and huge on-line shops and communities have grown out of the ability to produce a programmable web site.
There are many off the shelf solutions available to provide common web tools such as on-line shops, blogs and discussion forums, but these are only the starting place. Most systems can be extended (we have written custom code for various parts of this site) to provide additional functionality.
Where there is not a suitable off the shelf solution that can be extended or customised we will look at the full requirement and design & build a complete bespoke solution.
Most of our solutions would be provided using the PHP programming language and MySQL database within a Linux environment. We can also produce solutions on Windows platforms using ASP.Net and classic ASP.