What Do I Need To Know About Servers In a Web Development Role?

My first point of advice is to not exclusively limit yourself to any one role. It's great to be a specialist and have a deep knowledge in a particular skill set (PHP, for instance). However, it is just as important to have a broad knowledge that spans across the rest of your domain. In my experience most teams are not looking to hire someone that has the knowledge to rewrite the core functionality of PHP, but rather someone that can handle any problem that is thrown at them (although having that level of knowledge would certainly not hurt). Or at least someone that can help solve any issues that the team encounters. For instance, imagine a situation where your application goes down and customers are being affected. You can either throw your hands up and say "I have no idea what to do..." or you can SSH into the server, start scanning logs, notice that the diskspace of a particular filesystem is full and proceed to clean it out. This is a minor example but I think the point is clear. With that basic knowledge, as a developer, you could write a script that monitors that particular filesystem and cleans it out once it reaches a certain threshold. You have now become that much more valuable to your manager. Another thing I have learned during my career, is that things move fast, and if you don't keep up you are going to be left behind. The more you know about your entire environment (including the business aspects) the better off you are. That's not to say you need to be an expert in everything you do, but at least have the knowledge to not be labeled as clueless. The more familiar you are, the more adaptable you are, and the more valuable an asset you are to your company. To specifically answer your questions... What server elements should I know as a developer? Be familiar with the entire application stack. Know what web server, database, caching mechanisms, etc. that are being used. And which versions, too. Have enough familiarity that you can recreate the environment on your own server. Which, in and of itself, is vitaly important. You should strive to more or less have the same environments in development and production, as it reduces surprises (http://12factor.net/dev-prod-parity). As a developer what dealings do you have with the server? This really depends on the team. In my particular case, the developers play a huge role in staging the environments. We are the most familiar with the inner workings of the application and so are in the best position to determine what server technologies are in place to run it. I imagine not all teams have such a hands on approach, but to have enough familiarity to be able to involve yourself in the discussions is a great advantage. Specifically, in regards to version control, you as the developer are highly affected by which technology is chosen (Git, Subversion, Mercurial, etc.), and therefore should strive to involve yourself in the decision process. So, now what? As for my suggestion as to how best to approach learning all of this? http://mdswanson.com/blog/2012/08/27/move-your-feet.html. Don't worry about trying to read everything you can on the subject, most of it will probably just leak out of your brain by the time you are finished. Instead start developing something from the ground up. Start with http://www.vagrantup.com/; it will allow you to easily create and manage a virtual machine that you can use as your new playground. Then, install a web server and a database and start creating. If you have an idea for an app, perfect, go for it... if not, find a tutorial or try to recreate an existing app. The point is just to become familiar with the entire process. Also, as a PHP developer, be sure to check out http://www.phptherightway.com/... it really contains a lot of excellent info. And most importantly, don't stress yourself out. I imagine you followed the path of a developer because it's something you enjoy and are passionate about... don't lose sight of that!

Focusing on What do you need to know about servers to be a web developer?... Actually surprisingly little. Your main areas of knowledge should be programming, html, php, etc. What you to need to know is how to run things locally and when you do this you are using your box as a 'server'. So when running locally you use a web browser to view the pages, just as with any internet site... except yours will be http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 As for configuring cgi, http, etc. I don't expect you need to know that. You can always work through any general book on setting up a web server for the OS you work in and that would be enough coverage to know the general terms. For the bigger picture I recommend getting into Linux and learning how to set up and configure machines such as web servers. But only if you actually have an interest in the stuff. Not just to impress in interviews. Finally I would recommend you consider making notes during interviews about areas you don't know enough about. It would help if your question was more specific about just which terms, etc. you didn't know.

You need to know below things to complete the web development cycle. 1) IDE (Netbeans and Eclipse etc.) 2) Any programing language for coding. (PHP, java, etc. ) 3) Front technology for page designing (HTML, CSS etc.) 4) Backed database to store and retrieve data. (MySQL etc) 3) Version controlling system for checking and retrieve you code form repository. 4) build tool to compile you code with dependent files. (Ant, Maven) 6) Web server to deploy and run you code. 7) Need to know basic deployment process over servers to run and test you web and ejb component. (Tomcat, Web-Logic server)

In addition to DemetriKots answer, I'd also add looking at solutions for automated deployment and continuous integration. Setting up the server initially is only one step, and deploying over FTP is painful and error prone, with no proper solution for rolling back bad deploys. http://hudson-ci.org/ - Continuous integration server http://www.phing.info/ - automated build tool, specifically for PHP, based on Ant http://ant.apache.org/ - automated build tool http://www.capify.org/ - create deployment scripts to automate and ease deploying your web application.