Nowadays, we have many printed and digital sources that offer step-by-step directions for making web-based applications. The development environment can be "smart" sufficient to spot and correct the many errors that early developers had to contend with frequently. There are a variety of development platforms that can quickly transform ordinary static HTML pages into highly interactive software.
These development practices, methods, methodologies, and platforms share the same ground and are all susceptible to the same web development Toronto issues caused by web-based applications.
This set of web design advice aims to help you understand some of the most frequent mistakes made during different phases of the development process and assist you in becoming an improved developer. I've covered the most common issues shared by nearly all web developers, such as validation and security, scalability and SEO. Of course, you shouldn't be confined by the specific examples in this article since they're just meant to give you an idea of the possible issues you may face.
1: Incomplete Input Validation
Validating input from users on both the server and client-side is a must! We all know the old fashioned advice "do not rely on input from users"; however, the errors that result from validation occur often.
The most frequent error result is SQL Injection which is in OWASP Top 10 every year.
Most front-end development frameworks come with out-of-the-box validated rules, which are very easy to implement. In addition, most back-end development tools use basic annotations to ensure that your data is in line with official regulations. Implementing validation can take a long time; however, it should be a part of your routine coding practices.
2: Authentication Without Proper Authorization
Before we move on, please take a moment to ensure we're on the same page with the two terms. In the Top 10 Security Issues on the Web:
Authentication: Validating that a person is (or at the very least appears to be) an individual user, as long as they have supplied their security details (password and answers to security-related questions, fingerprint scans, etc. ).
Authorization: Verifying that a specific user has access to a particular resource or has been given permission to act.
Another way of looking at it is that Authentication is being aware of who an entity is, and the authorization process is about knowing precisely what an entity can do.
When you make a password change, you will see your application complete the following POST:
When you use the /change password method to verify your user is logged into and that the token is not expired. You then look up the user's profile using the: username parameter. You then change the password of your user.
So, you verified that your user is authenticated, and you completed his request, thus making his account password change. It seems like a good idea, right? The truth is, no!
It is crucial to confirm that the person operating and the one that has the password changed are exact. Any information stored on the browser can be tampered with, and any advanced user could easily update username:'elvis' to username:'Administrator' without using built-in browser tools.
In this scenario, we did Authentication to ensure that the user had provided security credentials. You can also validate that authenticated users can only use the / change password method. But this is not enough to shield your users from attacks by malicious hackers.
You must ensure that you validate the requestor and the content of the request in the /change password procedure and then implement an appropriate Authorization of the request, ensuring that the user can change only her personal information.
Authorization and Authentication are two different sides of the identical coin. Please do not treat them in isolation.
3: Not Ready to Scale
In the current world of rapid creation, accelerators for startups and instant global exposure of innovative ideas, getting an MVP (minimum viable product) on the market in the shortest time possible is the norm for many businesses.
But this pressure on time can cause even the most experienced team members of web design to ignore specific issues frequently. Scaling is typically among the things that teams overlook. The MVP idea is fantastic but goes too far, and you'll be in serious trouble. However, choosing a robust web server and database and segregating all layers of your application on separate servers isn't enough. It would help if you considered many aspects of avoiding having to rewrite significant portions of your app later - which can be an essential web development challenge.
Let's say, for instance, that you decide to save images of profile pictures uploaded by your users through a website server. This is a perfect solution because files are readily accessible to your application and file handling techniques are accessible across all development platforms. You could even offer the images in static form, which will mean minimal load on your application.
What happens when your application grows and you require two or more servers behind a load balancer? While you've successfully swollen your database storage, session state servers, and web server, the application scales down quickly, like profile images. This is why you should implement a file synchronization program (that may have some delay and could produce temporary errors like 404) or ensure that the files are distributed across the webserver.
You had Tossue initially use a; hundred file storage locations such as databases, shared file storage, or any other alternative to remote storage. It could have cost several extra hours to get it all in place, but it was worth the effort.
4: Wrong or Missing SEO
The primary reason for ineffective or insufficient SEO best practices for web pages is misinformation from "SEO experts." Web developers often think that they are knowledgeable about SEO and believe it's not particularly complicated, but this is not the case. SEO proficiency requires a lot of time researching best practices and the constantly evolving guidelines for how Google, Bing, and Yahoo index websites. If you don't always test and use accurate tracking and analysis, you're not an SEO expert and cannot claim to be one.
Additionally, SEO is often put off as an activity that happens after. This is a massive cost of issues with web development. SEO isn't limited to establishing good content, including keywords, meta-data and image alt-tags, site maps, etc. It involves removing redundant content. It also involves having a crawlable site architecture, effective loading times, intelligent backlinking, etc.
As with scalability, it is essential to consider SEO when building your web application. You could discover that completing your SEO implementation task requires rewriting your entire application.
5: Time or Processor Consuming Actions in Request Handlers
One of the most notable examples of this error is sending an email in response to a user's action. Many developers believe that making an SMTP call and sending an email directly from the user request handlers is the way.
You've set up an online book store and anticipate launching with just a few hundred orders per day. As part of the order-intake procedure, you'll send confirmation emails when a customer orders. This should work fine initially, But how do you proceed when you increase the size of your system and suddenly receive thousands of requests to send confirmation emails? There are either SMTP connection timeouts or quota exceeded, or your application responds slower because it handles emails instead of the user.
An external system must manage every process or process to make HTTP requests as quickly as possible. In this instance, you must have an external mailer service to take orders and send out notifications.
6: Not Optimizing Bandwidth Usage
The majority of development and testing is conducted within a local network. Therefore, if you download five background images that are three megabytes or more, you don' you any issue with your 1Gbit connectivity speed within your environment for web development in Toronto. However, when users begin loading the 15MB home page using 3G connections on their phones, You should be prepared for complaints and issues.
Optimizing your bandwidth use can provide you with a significant performance boost. To achieve this, you may require just a few techniques. There are some things that a lot of experienced web developers perform automatically, for example:
- Minification of all JavaScript
- Minification of all CSS
- Compression of server-side HTTP
- Optimizing image resolution and size
7: Not Developing for Different Screen Sizes
Responsive designs have been a hot issue in recent years. The expansion of smartphones with different screen resolutions has provided new methods of accessing web-based content. However, it is also a source of a variety of web-related issues. The number of web visits originating via tablets and smartphones is growing each day, and the trend is increasing.
To guarantee seamless navigation and easy access to your website's content, you should allow users to access the content from any device.
There are many methods and techniques for creating mobile-friendly websites. Every development platform offers its tricks and tricks. However, some frameworks can be non-platform dependent. The most popular is likely Twitter Bootstrap. It is an open-source and cost-free HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework used by all major development platforms. Follow Bootstrap guidelines and patterns in developing your application, and you'll have an incredibly responsive web application without problem whatsoever.
