Web development is a broad term that incorporates all areas of developing a web site for the World Wide Web. This can include graphical web design, actual coding of pages, backend programming, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, web development usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding.For larger businesses and organizations, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people, while smaller organizations may only require a single webmaster.

In addition, cost of web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars, as was the case only five or six years ago, you can now develop a simple website with only a few hundred dollars.[citation needed] As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new websites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a webpage in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required.