If you’re building a website or a blog, there are thousands of applications and pieces of shareware available to enhance the site’s features. Bloggers and site builders are aware of the technologies employed to post blogs, and many of them are server rather than client end applications. Cloud computing is the term given for Internet-based computing, and loosely defined, could be regarded as the sharing of resources over the Internet, for whatever purpose. But more specifically, cloud computing could be construed in part as the means by which computer applications can be used by a user while those resources are still online, rather than having requirements to download that same software before putting it to use. As examples, Microsoft’s Visual Web Developer or Front Page applications, or Macromedia software such as Dreamweaver would be client side web building applications. These have all the necessary features required to create and build web pages offline before uploading them.

Joomla or other content management systems (whether shareware and open source or more proprietary in nature) could be regarded as server side applications to a greater degree than the site builders from Microsoft or Macromedia. Although you can build content offline, often enhancements or changes are made using a content management system’s online capabilities so that the changes are immediate. Joomla’s web application framework is just that – and although offline use is possible, even the application itself is regarded by many as being best employed in Internet and intranet environments.

The differences are stark when you compare client sided coding and its server sided equivalents. ASP.net could be seen as server side code, HTML as client side. The rules about client and server side technologies are not hard and fast. Applications have to be adaptable so that either framework can be used. However, recent developments in computing mean the prevalence of server side technologies have changed the face of managed hosting and managed services for the better.