How Front-End and Back-End Work Together

Difference between Front-End and Back-End in Website Design and Development

Front-end and Back-end are the two most popular terms used in the web industry, but the difference between the two is quite subtle. These two play a significant role and are the most important parts of website design and development. The two terms are crucial to web development, but they are very different from each other.

Here are some basic guidelines to help you tell the difference between the front-end and back-end, or at least be able to begin to understand what someone does when they say they're a "front-end or back-end developer."

Front-End

The front-end, also referred to as the "client-side", is what you see and interact with, and the back-end is how all of it works. Front-end may refer to the graphical user interface, including the flashy buttons, colorful images, navigation menus, etc. The front-end is everything the user sees, including design and some languages like HTML and CSS. It is the part of the website that you can see and interact with directly in order to receive the back-end capabilities of the system.

What are the Main Front-End Development Languages?

These three languages will do the trick:

• HTML

HTML is the foundational coding language that organizes and creates web content so it can be displayed by a browser.

• CSS

CSS is a language that goes with HTML and defines the website content’s style, such as layout, fonts, colors, etc.

• JAVASCRIPT

JavaScript is a programming language used for more interactive functions or elements like drop-down modal windows, drop-down menus, and contact forms.

These three important elements create everything that’s visually presented when you visit a webpage—wwhether it’s online shopping, reading the news, checking your email, or conducting a Google search.

In addition to basic front-end languages, you’ll come across frameworks like Bootstrap and Angular, JavaScript libraries like jQuery, and CSS extensions like Sass and LESS. There are a lot of resources like these that support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Their intent is simply to make code (and the process of writing it) more organized and manageable by providing various tools and templates compatible with common coding languages.

Back-End

The back-end, also referred to as the "server-side", is that part of the website you cannot see or interact with, like databases and servers. If you want to turn your site into something that users would want to interact with, you’ll need to get more in-depth with regard to what’s going on behind the scenes of the website. Everything that happens behind the scenes can be attributed to back-end web development.

Unlike the front-end, it runs on the server side but communicates with the front-end to ensure everything works fine. In every application, there’s also a noteworthy portion of non-user interface code that deals with all the complex systems that happen in the background.

What Are The Languages used in back-end development?

Your website needs a database to manage all the customer and product information. A database stores website content in a structure that makes it easy to retrieve, organize, edit, and save data. It runs on a remote computer called a server. There are many different databases that are widely used, such as MySQL, SQL Server, PostgresSQL, and Oracle.

Your website will still contain front-end code, but it also has to be built using a language that a database can recognize. Some common back-end languages are PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, and.Net. These programming languages often run on frameworks that simplify the web development process.

How Do the Front-End and Back-End Work Together?

Three components work together simultaneously in the back-end (server side) to make the front-end (client side) work as it does: the server, the database, and the application.

The database stores all the data where it can be easily located and changed whenever necessary. Changes made in the database are visible across the web application. Back-end programming requires a language that the database can interpret and that tells the browser what to use from the database located on the server. And so, the front-end runs with the help of this back-end process.

With all of these parts working together correctly, customers can come to your website and search for the particular kind of product they want to buy—perhaps they want to pull up a list of shirts by the Dragonball brand. When they type it into the search box (on the front-end), the application looks through all the product data stored in the database (back-end) and returns the appropriate information in the form of front-end code that the browser displays as the user’s requested list.

While both the front-end and back-end form the basis of how a website works, they have their fair share of differences in terms of functionality. While the front-end is everything a user sees and interacts with, the back-end is what a user cannot see. Both are important to web development, but their responsibilities and the environments they work in are totally different.

The development of a web application is a team effort. Before hiring a company, it is necessary to take a look at their expertise in order to ascertain whether the company is the right fit for your application needs. Over the years, Go4Global has teamed with companies across the globe and helped materialize their web or app vision.

At Go4Global, our expert team of front-end and back-end website developers has years of experience building customized and unique websites for clients throughout the country and some other parts of the world. We know what makes a website stand out among others, and we’d love to help your business carve out a truly stunning web presence.

Planning to get a website for your business? We would love to assist you, so if you’re interested, just get in touch with us, and we will take care of the rest!