Web Stack Series Part 5: HTML and Markup

July 17, 2007 | Filed Under Web Site Development, Technology

How do web developers create the layouts of web pages? How do they tell the browser to arrange images around the copy in just the right fashion? How do web browsers know that one paragraph of text should be italic, while the other should be bold? The secret sauce behind all this magic is a […]

Web Stack Series Part 3: The Database

July 5, 2007 | Filed Under Database, Technology

Parts 1 and 2 of our look at the Web Stack introduced us to the Physical Server and the Webserver Software. Part 3 of the series brings us to the second piece of software installed on the physical server: the Database.
Dynamic, database-driven web sites have become the gold standard on the Web. Sites are updated in […]

Web Stack Series Part 2: Webserver Software

July 2, 2007 | Filed Under Technology, General

Part 2 of The Web Stack Explained leads us to the webserver software. Webserver software basically serves as the interface for files stored on the server. Let’s start things of with a good, but rather stuffy definition of the word “webserver” from Wikipedia:
A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which […]

Web Stack Series Part 1: The Physical Server

June 30, 2007 | Filed Under Technology

This is the first installment of our first series: The Web Stack Explained. Today we are going to talk about the first level of the stack: the physical server.
Techies love talking about servers and networking infrastructure. Let me tell you a little secret: a server is just a computer; no more, no less. […]

Solo Signal Series: The Web Stack Explained

June 27, 2007 | Filed Under Technology, General

Websites, at their core, are very simple things: a single file of plain text and markup that tells the user’s browser what to display. Sometimes there are hyperlinks, images and forms included on those pages, but that is typically as complex as the majority of websites ever get. So why does it cost so much […]