What is Web development and CMS?

How are websites and web platformes actually developped; which programming languages, which frameworks and which libraries are used and how are they used to create a frontend experience for the user? Get a technical introduction to web development as well as some of the major content management systems. Learn what differentiates one cms from the other and which challenges web development projects often entail.

An introduction to HTML, CSS and JavaScript

HTML, CSS and Javascript are the foundation of web frontend development. To make sure that we all understand the basic concept of this, let us start with this warm up video:

JavaScript

JavaScript is a key element in modern web development. Therefore let us dig a bit more into this with below video:

Frontend framework and libraries

In recent years the frontend frameworks and new libraries has made it possible to have much more functionality on the client side (in the browser) instead of on the server. This also means that the demand for frontend developers with a deep understanding of complex software development has grown a lot. Furthermore, it means that in many projects before the frontend development and the graphic design was handled by the same role, but this is now more and more separated in two different roles, when the project has a certain complexity.

ReactJS

React is basically a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, and it created by Facebook. We have seen a large demand for strong software developers with React experience in the last years.

Below is an introduction to ReactJS

Angular 2 vs. React

The first version of Angular was called “AngularJS” and the second version is called either “Angular” or “Angular 2” (Yeps, quite confusing…)

Angular 2 is a very popular frontend framework and fits well into Microsoft dominated environments. Below video gives a comparison between ReactJS and Angular 2:

What is a CMS

Very few companies today would build a website from scratch. Instead you would use a CMS (Content Management System), which means that you are given a lot of functionality and don’t have to be a software developer to make changes on the website.

These are the primary CMS that Right People Group work with:

• Sitecore (based on .NET)
• EPiServer (based on .NET)
• Umbraco (based on .NET)

For Sitecore and EPiServer you pay for the user licenses, while the open-source content management systems Umbraco and WordPress are free to use. Below video gives you a good introduction to the concept of a CMS System:

Sitecore

Sitecore is a Danish company with global success, and the CMS is being used by primarily medium-sized and large customers all over the world.

Even though there are quite advanced and free alternatives, many customer choose it because of the advanced functionality they get. Recent versions of Sitecore focuses heavily on the “Personalization” meaning that the site changes according to the profile and behaviour of the visitor.

Our experience is that it is still quite few customers that are currently getting high business value from personalization, and the e-commerce sites are the ones that are furthest in this. The idea is right, and it is the future of advanced websites to adopt to the user. However, it is still hard to implement and many customers have much more basic challenges to solve before coming to a very sophisticated degree of personalization.

Since Sitecore is based on .NET, a Sitecore developer has to be a strong .NET developer. However, it is far from enough to be a skilled .NET developer if you want to work as a Sitecore developer on a consultant basis. You need to have large specific Sitecore development experience to be a high-performer on complex Sitecore projects.

Below video gives an overview of Sitecore:

EPiServer

EPiServer is a Swedish CMS that has had very high growh in the recent years. EPisever has a strong focus on e-commerce, and it is a very strong product, when there is a high amount of complex integrations to be made (e.g. to an ERP system). From a conceptual point of view EPiServer is quite similar to Sitecore and in the below interview that is very strategic, you can see that like Sitecore they are transforming from being a basic to CMS to being a complete marketing automation platform.

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