Complete Roadmap for Full Stack Web Development
By: Aman Kumar Goyal
Tags: Web Development, Web Design, Roadmaps, Programming, Computer Science

Photo by Bruno Bergher on Unsplash

Hello folks

Today we are going to discuss about the complete roadmap for web development. It is a general trend students who are in their initial days of engineering thinks about learning web development, as we all encounter many websites in our day-to-day lives and developing these websites is really very interesting which is why many individuals are attracted towards this domain.

But web development consist of many things it consist of many technologies, languages and frameworks and there are many different players in the industry also, the resources for learning web development are huge as web development is very popular and many people publish blogs, create tutorials, video series and courses and the number of such resources is really huge, it leads to a huge dilemma of which resource to follow and which stack is perfect and beginner students spend a lot of time searching for these resources or trying different resources and in the end you would end up wasting all your time.

So, I am sharing with you a complete web development roadmap to begin with in which I will share the various technologies used and various components of web development and along with that I will share with you the appropriate resources to follow so that you can become good in web development.

Web Development

Web development is simple thing it is the skill of developing a website but, developing a fully functional website is not an easy task and it many many components, the whole web development can be broadly divided into two sub-parts i.e. frontend and backend, let’s see about them in a little more detail:

Frontend Development

Fontend development as the name suggests is the front part the visible part of your website the part with which your user will interact. Everything which you see on a website is frontend the various textboxes, images, texts, colors, the background, fonts etc. etc. these all are covered in frontend.

Let’s take an example, all of us have seen a simple login form of any website it consist of the company icon, headings, user icon, input boxes, buttons, links and many others all of these components, all this styling comes under frontend when you submit your credentials then request will be sent that too is a part of frontend development.

Backend Development

Backend development deals with all the tasks that occurs in the back part of website i.e. behind the curtain, the part related to whatever happening in the background. Everything related to server and database it consists of receiving requests, sending response, saving, creating, updating and deleting data in the database.

Let’s get back to our example, what happens when we click the submit button? The credentials we enter in the form is sent to the server which receive them and then verify them from the database and if got verified it will let you enter the website.

So a website consist of a client side which interacts with the user and a server side which will deals with all the technicalities that takes place in the background.

Components

Now let’s look at each component of web development one by one.

HTML

HTML is the first step, it is also referred to as the skeleton of the website it is used to create the basic structure of the website and hence it is the basic building block of website.

We create basic structure of website, HTML is used to create skeletal features including:

Header and Footer

Input Forms

Navigation Bars

Website Content

Video player

Links. etc…..

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in HTML. CSS describes how elements should be rendered on screen. CSS stylize the website and make it more beautiful and much more user-friendly if you want to be a website designer then this is a very crucial skill.

In a website CSS is used to add features like:

Background

Font

Font-size

Margin and Padding

Buttons

Cards

Icons

Bootstrap

The next step would be to learn using bootstrap.

Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive, front-end web development. It is an excellent framework and will surely make you work super easy, you will not have to write long CSS properties for some common task all of it is just a class away (literally) i.e. one has to add classes to add any required styling.

To learn bootstrap you can just refer to official website of bootstrap and there is nothing to be learned, it is required to just add a class.

Using it is pretty easy:

Add bootstrap(downloaded) or its CDN (refer to official website) in to your website.

Go to official website and search for the thing you want for example, navbar.

If whole code is required then copy the code and modify it according to you needs else you would just need to add classes.

You can directly use many classes like “btn-large”, “col-md-3” etc.

JavaScript

JavaScript (JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, or just-in-time compiled programming language with first-class functions. While it is most well-known as the scripting language for Web pages, many non-browser environments also use it, such as NodeJs. It is used to add functionality in your website it is the connecting link between frontend and backend and frontend all the data transfer from frontend to backend is done using JS.

Validating User’s Input

Simple Client-side Calculations

Greater Control

Handling Dates and Time

Generating HTML Content

Frontend Framework

Writing vanilla(plain) javascript is a hectic task and at production level frameworks are used to do the work efficiently and much faster. There are many frameworks available but I am just recommending courses on two of most popular frameworks both of them are great and you can learn any of them, if you are confused I would recommend learn any one and after having enough experience in one you can easily learn the other if needed.

AngularJs

AngularJS is a JavaScript-based open-source front-end web framework mainly maintained by Google.

ReactJs

React is an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook.

NodeJs

As you might be aware that javascript is the most popular language(acc to survey done by Stackoverflow) the main reason for such an amazing popularity is nodejs as it enables developer to use javascript at both front and backend also, it is very efficient, fast and scalable and that’s why it is so much popular.

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside a web browser. It is used at server side to manage backend operations it is the connecting link between frontend and database, it can be called as the main functioning body of a website as it is responsible for all the operations that are happening at backend. It also makes the website dynamic that is you don’t need to hardcode everything data would be added through database.

Mongo DB

MongoDB is a cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc.

MongoDB is part of stack i.e. MEAN or MERN stack, that’s why it is recommended when working with node.

Mastering Web Development — A Myth

Before moving on to resources I first want to share with you something. There are many people who claim to make you a master of web development and I have seen many questions on different discussion forums where students ask how to master web dev in 6,3 or even one month and there are many resources which also claim so but, let me tell you one cannot master web development in such a sort time.

Mastering web development takes a lot of time (3–5years) and all the sources one can come across teaches only the basics of web development and other advanced concepts can only be learned by experience while working on projects. So stop thinking too much about it and just learn the basics and start building some cool projects which you can showcase on your resume and you will learn a lot while working on these projects.

Resources

Udemy Courses : One thing before moving on udemy courses are best and cheapest among paid courses and you won’t find such detailed beginner-friendly resource anywhere else so, if you might be thinking I am referring to a course then this is the reason behind it.

My Advice

Before moving on to the roadmap part here’s an advice from me. I would highly recommend you to take a very popular course on udemy — The Web Development Bootcamp by Colt Steele, I myself have done this course and it is an amazing course it will give you a complete sense of what web development is and you would be able to see the big picture it is a perfect course for giving you a perfect headstart. Do it if you want but I would highly recommend it.

Ending Note…..

At the end I would say that learning web development is a continuous process and you also might be aware that learning never stops, after learning these basics you won’t get any courses for advanced concepts and your only friend would be the official documentation and you can learn only by making projects and taking part in hackathons. I am telling you this because when you reach that phase you might get stuck and couldn’t figure out what to do then follow this approach:

Work on projects.

Read Official Documentation.

Try to clone good websites.

Try to add any good feature which you observe on others website

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Hope you liked my blog and if you are reading this article till this end then you surely are stepping in the world of web development, so wish you a very good luck for your excited journey in the world of web development.