No single person involved in computers can keep up on all the advances that have taken place in computing in the last 20 years. Although the Internet has been around since 1969, the world-wide network did not achieve popularity until the late 1990s. The first few websites offered text, basic HTML interfaces and little else. The first websites did not allow for web mail, nor did they integrate other Internet features such as FTP to expand the functionality of a website.

The next major leap in web site technology came when someone developed a language similar to Java that browsers could recognize. This language, called JavaScript, started the birth of modern websites. Today, web masters can use CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP and a number of other scripting languages to make a modern website. The largest websites do not have actual coded pages, but rather a database of pages scripted together to produce the final page.

While all of this is fascinating, the latest developments in web site design have not come from the personal computer access market. Mobile devices such as tablets and cell phone are the fastest expanding way to access the Internet. A web master has to design mobile web pages to get the most out of his website.