Planning
Frontend, backend and what your site needs
A backend is not a sign of a better website. It is extra machinery that stores data and runs rules. Here is when a business site needs one and when it does not.
Quotes for a website sometimes include the word “backend”, and owners are left to guess whether they need one. The short answer is that many business websites do not, and adding one changes the cost, the maintenance and the security work. This note explains the terms so you can ask better questions.
The two halves
The frontend is everything the visitor’s browser shows and runs: the layout, text, images, colours and the buttons they tap. It is built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The backend is code that runs on a server instead of in the browser. MDN, the web documentation project, describes its main job as deciding what information is sent to the visitor, while the frontend handles how it is structured and presented.
Static and dynamic sites
MDN draws the line between two kinds of site.
- A static site returns the same stored files for a given address. The server finds the file and sends it. Nothing is built at the moment of the request.
- A dynamic site builds some of its pages when they are asked for, usually by combining data from a database with page templates. The same address can show different things to different people.
Many sites sit between the two, but the question to ask is simple: does this site have to remember or calculate anything on a server?
What a backend is used for
MDN lists the usual jobs of server-side code:
- storing content and data in a database and delivering it;
- user accounts and personalised content;
- restricting content to people who are allowed to see it;
- remembering a visitor between visits, such as staying logged in;
- sending emails, texts or other notifications;
- checking the data that visitors submit.
Does your business site need one?
This part is judgement, not a rule. A backend is usually worth its cost when the site has to do something on the server, such as:
- take online payments and track orders;
- manage bookings that must not clash;
- let customers log in to see their own orders or documents;
- hold a large searchable database that changes every day;
- give your staff a dashboard to manage quotes, jobs or stock.
A site that presents information and sends enquiries to a phone or WhatsApp usually does not need one. A product catalogue with a specification table and a data sheet for each product is content, and content can be published as ordinary pages.
What this means for the packages
None of the Website Craft Room packages includes a backend, a booking system or online payments unless they are agreed in your written proposal. The enquiry form on this site works without a backend: it opens WhatsApp with your message ready, and you press send yourself. That is deliberate. A form that quietly stores messages on a server is a form that can lose them, and a server needs looking after.
Questions to ask
If a quote includes a backend or a form that sends data to a server, ask:
- Where is the data stored, and in whose account?
- What happens to a message when the server is down? Does the visitor see an error?
- Who updates the software and who pays for the hosting it needs?
- What does it add to the price now, and to the monthly cost?
- Can the same result be reached without it?
The last question is the most useful one. A simpler design that does the job is cheaper to build, cheaper to run and has less to go wrong. For the running costs and risks of the hosting side, see HTTPS, backups and updates, explained.