Development of a website begins with a plan. That plan, generally speaking, may be divided into these three parts:

Website design plan

Basics

Besides choosing the domain name and the hosting server, the developer needs to decide which tools he or she may want to use. W3 Consortium has been trying to standardize the web programming and protocols since its inception, and they have laid out a number of web designing standards; to name a few:

These standards, together with the server side scripting and a database based application, make a fully developed dynamic website. A website does not have to be, as mentioned, dynamic. A small website may be consisted only of a CSS and HTML material, thus being a static website.

The drawing below visualizes the available options:

Static and dynamic web design

Scripting

However, a real-time complex website will most of the time include some sort of communication with the visitors, and / or data collection. Dynamic sites include client-side scripting, mostly via JavaScript, while the server-side scripting consist of a script running on the hosting server. The server side scripting is used for background functions, form handling, data collection, communication with the database and many other functions, while the client-side scripting is mostly used to enhance user interactivity, website styling or layout modification in runtime and similar functions. 

Popular client-side scripts are:

  • JavaScript (open source);
  • VB Script (Microsoft);
  • Action Script (Adobe).
  • -etc…

The most often used server-side scripting languages are:

  • PHP (open source);
  • PERL (open source);
  • ASP (Microsoft);
  • Cold Fusion (Adobe);
  • etc…

The most popular database software packages for online applications are:

  • MySQL;
  • ODBC;
  • SQL;
  • etc…

Tools

While the web standard languages are open sourced and can be worked with by using the simplest possible tools, such as a common text editor, there are tools that are proprietary and may not come by cheaply. 

The widest spectrum of software packages comes from Adobe with the most popular being:

  • Adobe Dreamweaver (web programming);
  • Adobe Flash (multimedia);
  • Adobe Illustrator (graphics);
  • Adobe Fireworks (web graphics).

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, good online and offline tools that cover entire scope of web design and development environment.

For a homework try to Google term “web design tools” and see what happens. happy smiley