Development

This is the phase that takes your static website or application and breathes life into it. Our developers are some of the best in the business and will create a test platform on our servers where they will begin to code your project. Generally they will create the Home page first, and once complete we can present you with a temporary URL so you can evaluate the project’s interactivity, and monitor continuing progress. Once the site is built and the management and data systems are all working our Q & A team will run through the site many times testing and ensuring the code handles every possible combination of requests and clicks.

The development phase is the longest phase of any project and for good reason. Fifteen years ago a web firm had a much smaller core team. The web designers generally took the project through from the design phase to launch. The ‘development’ phase was nowhere near as complex because technology and basic web languages were in their infancy.

Over the years websites began connecting to databases, processing purchases via credit cards, storing personal information and allowing user account functionality. Then came the content management shift, where website owners were offered the ability to manage their own website content. The CMS, or content management system, was introduced and quickly became incredibly powerful, as each development firm tried to outdo their competition. Corporate staff could add new pages at will, publish articles, add products to their online stores, and eventually it became easy for non-technical people to build their own websites from scratch due to the sophistication of these CMS and website building applications. A shift from static websites to very powerful online applications took the relatively small design firms of the 1990s to much larger teams, incorporating web programmers and software engineers and eventually creating a new specialist called a web developer. It soon became impossible for web firms to compete without a development department.

Over the last five years developers and designers have had to once again re-examine how websites are assembled, learn new skills and adjust the production process. Audiences are increasingly relying on mobile devices and tablets rather than just traditional desktop monitors. Websites must now be designed and developed to adjust to all possible screen resolutions, adding manifold variety to an already maladjusted standard.

Development has many aspects to it and developers need to be fluent in multiple languages to be useful on the production floor – from HTML and CSS to javascript, PHP, C/C++, Python and many, many more. From the design documents and prototypes a developer must properly interpret the layout and layers of a design, understand its interactive aspects, construct the static portions of the site and then code the dynamic portions.

A website today can interface with databases, handle search and live communication channels, it can be required to record user information and store individual preferences, it must track statistics, sell things, interface with any number of third party software and service suppliers, it may need to syndicate news and feed social networks using third party APIs. The complexities of today’s average websites are only possible through focused planning, intelligent design, invested client feedback, and a brilliant development team.

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