Redcloud Systems Colorado Springs Web Development

Web development constitutes all the code that makes a website or a digital asset running on the web to work. It can be divided into two categories — front-end and back-end. The front-end or client-side of an application is the codebase responsible for ensuring the online digital asset or a website will actually display the designs created by a designer along with the user. The back-end or server-side of an application is responsible for managing data within the database and transporting that data to the front-end to be displayed to a typical user.

Web design governs everything that involves the visual aesthetics and usability of a website—color scheme, layout

information flow, and everything else related to the visual aspects of the UI/UX (user interface and user experience).

Web design cannot live without web development and web development cannot live without web design. It's a yin-yang thing. We believe we have mastered both - front-end and back-end. A balance of looks and functionality. Form and function in unison, in equal balance. Being that we are solution-centric, and platform agnostic, we generally recommend the best solution that fits the needs, not what we are good at or what we think we are good at.

Maybe best sit with our management and talk strategy, before we design and implement!

What Is Open Source Software, and Why Does It Matter?

Open-source software licenses give users freedom, they would not otherwise have, i.e. its source code is freely available to its users. Its users and anyone else can take this source code, modify it, and distribute their own versions of the program. The users also have the ability to distribute as many copies of the original program as they want. Anyone can use the program for any purpose; there are no licensing fees or other restrictions on the software.

The open-source software movement was created to focus on more pragmatic reasons for choosing this type of software. Open-source advocates wanted to focus on the practical benefits of using open-source software that would appeal more to businesses, rather than ethics and morals. There are many different licenses used by open-source projects, depending on which the developers prefer for their program. The GPL (General Public License), or GNU is widely used by many open-source projects, such as Linux

What is ERP and what can I do with it?

ERP is an industry acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning. Broadly speaking, ERP refers to automation and integration of a company’s core business to help them focus on effectiveness and simplified success. The term ‘ERP’ itself is not self-explanatory and refers to the business software that has been designed to record and manage your enterprise data.

An ERP system automates and integrates core business processes such as taking customer orders, scheduling operations, and keeping inventory records and financial data. ERP systems can drive huge improvements in the effectiveness of any organization by - assisting you in defining your business processes and ensuring they are complied with throughout the supply chain, protecting your critical business data through well-defined roles and security access, enabling you to plan your work load based on existing orders and forecasts, providing you with the tools to give a high level of service to your customers and translating your data into decision making information to name a few.

What is user-centered design (UCD) and why is it beneficial?

User centered design (UCD) is a design process that focuses on user needs and requirements. The consistent application of human factors, ergonomics, usability engineering, and other techniques is what keeps UCD revolving around the users. The aim is to produce highly usable and accessible systems, aiming for user satisfaction while averting negative effects on health, safety, and performance.

UCD is an iterative design approach that seeks to develop an understanding of user needs, doing so through a mixture of investigative (e.g., surveys and interviews) and generative (e.g., brainstorming) methods and tools. Crucially, UCD heavily involves users in all design and evaluation phases. In general, each iteration of the UCD approach involves four distinct phases.

During UCD, the design is based upon an explicit understanding of the users, tasks, and environments. The process aims to capture and address the whole user experience; therefore, the design team must include professionals across multiple disciplines (e.g., ethnographers, psychologists, software and hardware engineers), as well as domain experts, stakeholders, and the users themselves. Evaluations of the produced designs may be carried out by experts using design guidelines and criteria. However, a crucial matter is that UCD must—at some point—involve the users, and it should also involve long-term monitoring of use.

What are Server Operating Systems which is the 'best one'?

The operating system is the primary interface between applications, users, and the physical computer. You use an operating system everyday, even if you’ve never thought about it. If you have a PC, your operating system is Windows. If you are on a Mac, you have OSX. Your phone probably runs on either Android or iOS. Just like your home or office computer, servers need an operating system. The most common operating system for servers is Linux.

While very few people use Linux for their home or office desktop machines, Linux is the absolute standard for servers. It’s easy to use, also. Web hosting companies provide control panels, management utilities, and installation tools so that you don’t need to know (or care) about Linux at all to have a successful experience with web hosting. The only reason to use Windows for your server is if you need it to run some proprietary software that simply won’t run on Linux, like .NET, ASP, or Microsoft Silverlight.

For anything else — WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, any app written in PHP, anything built with Ruby or Python — Linux is the preferred operating system.

What steps do you take to balance demanding client requirements??

As a web development company, we may face unexpected challenges, including short turnaround times and over-ambitious clients. Gaining a clear understanding of your requirements is the first step to clarifying and diffusing some of the tension that creeps between you and the development. We seek then to perform under pressure- no matter the timeline and the task, communicate clearly, and lastly keep to commitment to releasing high-quality products.

Balancing demand some requirements as a web development company, we take steps to fully understand what is expected of us, prioritize our tasks and keep an open line of communication with you, the client. Keeping you pleased is a high priority, although we are not interested in producing buggy code and taking ineffective shortcuts to damage the final product.

How much money does it take to develop my web application?

If you desire a professional website or a web application, you will likely ask a web development company like us to do it for you. When launching a website, you may spend nothing, or your costs may go through the roof. Here, costs depend on multiple factors, such as:

- Is this a simple website with few pages of text or more complex with thousand-pages-long webpage. - Will you want to update it regularly or will it be a static website? - Must the website connect to your company’s data structure to gather content? - Do you want some shiny new feature i.e. the rage of the moment? - Will you need the company to think up user stories or solve complex UX problems? For example, creating a strategy to engage users, or A/B testing to choose a solution among several ideas?

...and hosting requirements -

- Do you want redundant servers, in case your server goes down? - Is 95% percent reliability adequate, or do you need professional, around-the-clock service? - Do you want high-profile, ultra-responsive dedicated servers, or can you cope with a slower, shared machine?

Depending on how you answer these questions, your site could cost thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What is the difference between web page, website, and web server?

As with any area of knowledge, the web comes with a lot of jargon. However, there are few basic terms that need to be understood at the outset, since you hear these expressions all the time. A web page is a simple document displayable by a browser, written in the HTML language, embedded with a variety of different types of resources such as - style information, scripts and media. All web pages that are available on the web are reachable through a unique address - just type the address in your browser address bar. Browsers can also display other documents such as PDF files or images, but the term web page refers explicitly to HTML documents.

A website is a collection of linked web pages and associated resources that share a unique domain name. Each web page of a given website provides explicit links - most of the time in the form of a clickable portion of text or buttons — that allow the user to move from one page of the website to another. If you need to access a website, type its domain name in your browser address bar, and the browser will display the website's main web page or homepage.

A web server is a computer hosting one or more websites. "Hosting" means that all the web pages and their supporting files are available on that computer. The web server will send any web page from the website it is hosting or to any user's browser, per user request. More importantly, since a web server can host multiple websites, the term web server is never used to designate a single website. A web server hosts and serves a cluster of websites, asynchronously as capacity allows as when the user demands it in the form or a http request.

How often do you ship your code?

Perfect answer - 'it depends' on various factors, mostly around process. If we are using the Waterfall method of development, shipping code takes lengthier timeframes - typically around 3 months for a single iteration at the very least, though it could be longer. A couple of months is a good time to design and code a sizeable chunk of software to make it feasible for test and release. Shorter timeframes will lead to a less stressful work environment than long timeframes. If we ship code frequently, our mistakes are not a huge deal because any problems can be fixed relatively quickly. The agile method of development churns out code every couple of week - again to reduce risk and rework.

We have used a more radical approach, which is known as Continuous Deployment, which basically means we ship our code live whenever we want. We attest to the best process that suits the project, the client and the development team.