What is a Frontend and a Backend? Basics of web development to clear your doubts

So you wanna be a full stack web developer but are confused with simple topics like a Frontend or a Backend. Stick around this article, and I'll guide you on how you can start with web development.

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Let's start with Frontend. The Frontend is basically the visual content that is rendered when you open a website. The browser renders that using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

You can make a Frontend either in fully Vanilla JavaScript, or you can use a JavaScript framework like React.js or Vue.js. Larger web applications typically use frameworks like these to make workflows easier.

You might be asking, wait a minute, how is the content dynamic in websites? Those topics are better covered in web networking, but in a nutshell, the Frontend uses network requests from your server (which is the Backend) to display dynamic data onto the website.

And this is a nice segue to the Backend, the backbone of web applications. The Backend handles everything from user authentication to handling user data.

You can make a Backend with a Backend framework like Django, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, Express.js, etc.

A Backend is deployed on a server, you can use cloud services like AWS, GCloud, DigitalOcean, Azure, etc for this.

So how does the Backend store data? A Backend interacts with a database that stores all the data. You can use databases like Postgresql, MongoDB, etc.

So, onto the final question, where do I start?

For the Frontend, you MUST learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build dynamic websites. And then comes the option of frameworks, you may choose any one of them, React.js and Vue.js are the most widely used ones in this industry.

For the Backend, if you have already learnt JavaScript and don't want to learn another language, I recommend you use Express.js. Otherwise if you're familiar with multiple languages or just want to learn Backend development, you may learn Django or Ruby on Rails. Those are the best options for beginners.

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