About 

When a user opens a web browser or desktop application, their experience is guided technologies referred to asclient side or front end technologies.

On the client side, almost all applications are rooted in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. JavaScript was originally known as the language of web browsers, and today's browsers continue to use JavaScript as the only language they recognize natively.

JavaScript provides the foundation of many of our favorite technologies, including Bootstrap, React and Electron on the client side. Node.js brings JavaScript to the server as well and many of our applications are run on Express, a Node.js web server.

For projects we are starting from scratch, we prefer the client side technologies provided by React, React Native and Electron.

A web application needs a home, called a host, with a reliable, secure and prompt connection to the internet. Response times should be measured in a handful of milliseconds and bandwidth needs to be sufficient to handle desired traffic levels. Today's web applications have two general paths for hosting; 1) an independent web server, or 2) platform as a service (PaaS). We have experience with both.

On the server side, we have experience configuring both Linux and Microsoft virtual private web servers at DigitalOceanand Amazon AWS. For direct deployment on a web server, Docker is an invaluable tool. All sites housed on our servers have SSL encryption provided by Let's Encryptmanaged by Certbot.

With today's platform as a service (PaaS) providers there is no longer a need to secure, configure and maintain and server on the internet. Deployment can be fully automated and services can be easily scaled to handle application traffic or data transfer. Depending on the application framework, we have deployed applications to PaaS services at DigitalOcean, Heroku, Vercel and Netlify.

Application frameworks today utilize four contemporary programming languages; JavaScript / TypeScript, PHP, C#, Java and Python. We have experience with the many listed here which covers a broad range of programming languages and specifications.

Each framework has its own unique advantages and challenges. Some of the frameworks, such as Django, Spring and ASP.NET, have built in capabilities for user registration and authentication. Others, such as Nest.js and Flask, provide only a range of recommended authentication solutions.

The choice of framework for a new project is a vital decision. Our preference for new projects would be Express on small projects andNest.js on larger more complex sites.

Almost all frameworks today are capable of working with a wide range of database technologies. Until recently, almost all databases were driven by SQL syntax and structure. The WordPress framework, for example, uses MySQL exclusively for site support. Microsoft SQL and Maria DB offer two more SQL options for our clients.

Today, many new applications prefer to begin with a NoSQL approach. NoSQL databases utilize key-value storage in documents with no defined relations between documents. All this makes the NoSQL an easy choice for many early in project development because it is quickly built and easy to modify.

Where projects are mature and the data are substantial, it makes sense to look into the advantages of NoSQL. However, for most of our websites and web applications, we deploy NoSQL databases on the MongoDB cloud server.