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General Discussion

Philip Bradbury
Philip Bradbury
33,368 Points
Posted by Philip Bradbury
Philip Bradbury
33,368 Points

Server Side what do you do with it?

Hi,

So i understand client side and server side differences but what i don't understand is what server side really does in terms of real world examples. I understand that you can speak with the data bases on a server but what else does server side do. i.e how does Facebook use it apart from holding peoples data, same with whats app, snap chat etc etc. Whats the true power of server side?? Any explanation would be great, I've googled it but all i get is the different types of server languages or a client vs server explanation which i get.

Thanks

Phil

1 Answer

Rebecca Vonada
Rebecca Vonada
5,274 Points
Rebecca Vonada
Rebecca Vonada
5,274 Points

Server-side processing lets you actually DO things with your data, etc. that the client-side (end-user) doesn't see or deal with. You can also optimize server-side languages to give better performance to your end users (examples include using GZIP and mod-deflate on Apache to speed up your site's performance). Server-side languages like PHP also let you do basic processing. Say, on a Magento platform, I can use PHP to call up specific product data and render my pages. I use the PHP to call up all of my style sheets and generate pages on a huge scale, rather than hand-coding each individual page.

Server-side allows you to make huge sites that are easier to code, easier to maintain and perform better. If each individual page on Facebook were hard-coded, it wouldn't be able to update as frequently or serve customized content to end-users.

This is a really rough explanation, you'll want to start using server-side languages to get an idea of the full power of it, but I hope this gives you a better idea of how they're used.

Philip Bradbury
Philip Bradbury
33,368 Points
Philip Bradbury
Philip Bradbury
33,368 Points

Thank you for that explanation. Currently learning PHP and kinda stuck on what to do with it thats slowing down my learning.