Even with ever-changing trends and frequently emerging new technologies, there are the best practices web development always employs as they are time-tested and proven to be efficient. In this article, we’ll look into the most appreciated and useful techniques and strategies that professional web developers like and utilize for outstanding results.
Best web development practices
Opt for learning and applying web development best practices. Here, I share some of the best front-end and back-end directives I personally adhere to.
Front-end development best practices for web
- Start with a <!DOCTYPE> declaration. It's crucial to inform browsers about the version of the HTML document is written in. This simple <!DOCTYPE html> instruction in HTML5 is required to ensure standard mode rendering of your pages. Otherwise, you’ll force browsers to render pages in Quirks mode.
- Single H1 on page. It’s a W3C Specification official recommendation for developers to use only one H1 on a page. Including several first-level heading tags will impair the search engine performance of your pages.
- Alt attribute for images. Don’t forget to specify the alt attribute in your <img /> tags. They have to describe precisely what the image is about since this description will be shown in case the image fails to load. This element can have a significant impact on the accessibility qualities of your web pages as well as search engine rankings.
- Use semantic markup. Our best practices in the website development blog has already brought to light the importance of semantic markup in HTML5. In short, the utilization of semantic tags makes your web pages structured and more comprehensible for both devs and search engines.?
- Close your tags. Even though browsers will be able to run your HTML code anyway, it’s still considered a bad practice to leave tags unclosed. Just like with undeclared <!DOCTYPE>, unclosed tags can cause errors in web page rendering. Some programmers rely on in-build validators to close their tags but they can put closing tags in the wrong places in the code causing web page crashes.?
- Import as few stylesheets as possible. Every additional CSS file negatively impacts the critical rendering path (CRP). The more stylesheets or stylesheet requests are included in your HTML document, the more time browsers will need to build the CSS objective model (CSSOM). To optimize your CRP and overall performance, opt for essential-only styles to represent your content.
- Don’t use inline styles. Out of three methods of adding CSS (external, internal, and inline), web developers consider the use of inline styles not just a bad but appalling practice. Adding different style rules to each element can turn the development process, web page organization and performance into a nightmare. Inline CSS impedes many important principles of web development such as consistency, maintainability, and accessibility.?
- Don’t use !important property. This rule overrides all previous styles in a particular element unless there’s another !important rule for each specific property. Web developers recommend abstaining from using it unless there’s no other way to add specificity. Otherwise, comprehending and debugging your CSS code will be rather complicated.
- Use shorthand properties. They allow you to set the values of several other CSS properties at once. You can save time and effort by writing style sheets that are more clean and readable by utilizing a shorthand property.
- Use CSS preprocessors. With only basic CSS web developers cannot reuse a set of rules in several selectors that contain unclear data across a stylesheet. A CSS preprocessor provides a sophisticated approach to writing that extends CSS functionality and allows generation of code from the program’s unique syntax. This advanced code is compiled into standard CSS code that the browser can comprehend.?
- CSS minification. When utilized excessively, large CSS files might make your site load more slowly and drive users away. Minification speeds up the browser's download and processing of these files, enhancing user experience and page performance by removing superfluous data from the CSS code.
- <script> tag positioning. In an HTML document, you can include the <script> tag inside the head part or the <body> section. Nevertheless, as it might speed up a webpage's load time, adding scripts to the bottom of the <body> element is one of the best web development practices in the front end. Because the browser won't allow any other content to render until the script is run, placing the script tag at the beginning of the HTML document will cause the website to load more slowly.
- Use <noscript> tag. When a user disables scripting in their browser, the <noscript> element in HTML is used to show text for those browsers that do not support script tags. The <head> and <body> tags both can include this tag.
- Minify your JavaScript code. Just like with CSS file minification, this practice means eliminating all superfluous characters from JavaScript source code for smaller file sizes without compromising its functionality. It entails using shorter variable names and functions and eliminating semicolons, whitespace, and comments.?
- Avoid inline JavaScript in HTML. Integrating JavaScript directly into your HTML pages is not regarded as a recommended approach. Avoiding inline JavaScript is one of the web development best practices aimed at enhancing maintainability and keeping the presentation layer and controller layer separate.?
Back-end web development best practices
- Opt for a distributed architecture. By dividing your workload over several servers, a distributed architecture may handle traffic more effectively than a single server. A distributed system is a group of computer programs that work together to accomplish a common objective by sharing computational resources among several distinct computation nodes.
- Enabled caching. Use caching to enhance response speeds and lower database load. To cache static files, use caching techniques like content delivery networks (CDNs) or in-memory caching (Redis or Memcached). Depending on the needs of your web application, implement caching at various levels, such as query caching, full-page caching, or application-level caching.
- Use a separation of concerns principle. One of the best strategies for developers and the most crucial components of architecture is the separation of concerns. Businesses employ this strategy to accurately divide security issues and enhance code maintainability. Using this method, back-end developers can modularize their code.?
- Opt for REST API architecture. This approach to a distributed API design is considered the most popular practice in back-end development. It is based on HTTP protocol and utilizes HTTP verbs to carry out CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) functions on resources. It’s important for back-end developers to completely understand and master this style since many consider REST a de facto standard of web architecture.?
- Microservices architecture for scalable code. Your system can be divided into smaller, standalone functions that can be designed and implemented independently thanks to microservices architecture. This method makes it simpler to scale individual services as needed, which can increase the scalability and dependability of your system.?
- Proper error handling. Put in place thorough error handling procedures to handle exceptions with grace and give clients insightful error messages. It is the procedure for precisely anticipating, identifying and fixing bugs in web programs, applications, or communications. Debugging and troubleshooting are made easier by logging errors and exceptions.?
- Monitor and analyze performance. Professionals use monitoring tools to keep tabs on back-end systems' health and performance. To track server metrics, response times, and resource usage, you can choose programs like Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, or New Relic. To maintain optimal system performance and proactively resolve performance concerns, devs set up alerts and notifications.?.?
Conclusion
This article is a short version of a comprehensive guide to the best practices of website development you can find at the link below
. It contains even more useful information and practical tips from experts. These time-tested methods and proven basics facilitate the development process.
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11 个月Amazing work i'd love to connect with you and learn from you Me Noor Mustafa Ujjan