Creating a fully functional website while only using vanilla coding

Question

When I say "Vanilla Coding", I am referring to websites that don't utilize server side coding (such as PHP, ASP, etc.), only HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

I know that there are a plethora of sites that already exist that don't utilize (to my knowledge) any of the common, server side languages used by many others (PHP, ASP, etc.), but still function just fine!

I am confused! How do these sites continue to save login information, keep records, etc. etc. without using a server side scripting language? Is there something that I am missing? Can JavaScript access more (such as databases and local files) than what I thought it could?

EDIT

Turns out I've made a serious and shameful mistake in assuming that just because it ended with a .html extension that it was client-side only. That is okay though because I'm learning. Thanks so much for the help everybody!

Answer 1

Essentially, unless you have some sort of server-side programming, you don't stand a chance at making a site with any amount of functionality. To break it down for you:

What you can do without server-side scripting:

• Serve static pages

What you need server-side scripting for:

• Absolutely everything else

Even something so simple as keeping a site consistent and up to date is a nightmare on wheels without, at the very least, some some sort of management system that pre-generates the static pages to be served. (Technically, one could argue that Copy+Paste in Notepad counts as this.)

As has been mentioned elsewhere; obfuscating the true nature of precisely what system is being used is trivial; and having URLs ending in, say, .html while using PHP is no issue.

Edit: In the most perverse case I can think of off the top of my head, you could have a lighttpd server masquerading as an IIS server, serving pages generated by an offline renderer fed to it by a Perl FastCGI script, sent together with PHP signature heading and using a mix of .asp and .jsp file extensions.

Of course, noone would do something as silly as that. I think…

Answer 2

No client side script can access server side information (like a database) without some sort of server side communication (through something like ajax or the like)

If you really ( i mean really as in don't do it ) want to do logins and the like on clients side, you would have to make some sort of cookie that you store on the user's computer, also you would need a list of users (which anyone can read) to use against

Answer 3

You're not going to see whether a site is using a server side language unless they let you see the file extensions. With URL rewriting, MVC patterns, etc., it's easy to hide, or even fake that information. Therefore, chances are very good that the sites that you think aren't using a server side language are actually using one.

Now, a site can save certain information in cookies, such as some basic preferences, but any authentication they appear to be doing wouldn't actually be doing anything without a server-side script accessing a database somewhere.

As a side note - I have worked on a site where the content was actually static, but made to look like a blog or CMS. It was an absolute nightmare and hugely error-prone.

What are these sites that you think aren't using server-side scripting?

Answer 4

This answer is very late but I leave this reply for anyone who may stumble upon it.

Using javascript/jQuery, and various APIs a simple site can be created only using client-side coding.

For instance, a simple shopping cart type of site can be created. I've done it before.

There are few (not many) strictly 100% jQuery based shopping cart solutions that are open-source.

How does the PG (pay gateway) get taken care of? You are limited to accepting payment through paypal, google checkout, and direct deposit.

What about allowing customers to leave comment? You can use API's like Disqus. What about chat support? Zopim is pretty handy.

How do you get notified when purchase is made? Paypal & google checkout notifies you.

What about sending mass email? Mail Chimp.

Personally, I almost always use WordPress or some other types of CMS but using only vanilla coding to build a simple site is not only feasible but very sensible in certain circumstances.

Answer 5

Nowadays a lot of sites are using Javascript as a server side solution, Node.js being the most popular. Check out this list: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Projects,-Applications,-and-Companies-Using-Node