With rapidly evolving technologies driving Web 2.0 (and above) infrastructures, it is important to have a solid foundation in the functional components that make up a Web presence architecture. This short collection of overview articles provides a high-level description of the front-end, back-end, and infrastructure technologies involved in such architectures.

The first article, "Some Trends in Web Application Development" highlights the various languages and tools used to create both interactive Web pages as well as scalable back-end Web sites. Bearing in mind that a Web site is only effective if it can handle the expected traffic load, the second article, "Some Experiments with the Performance of LAMP Architecture", provides some benchmark perspectives that highlight some of the issues and concerns to focus on during a Web site rollout. The final article, "A Reference Architecture for Web Browsers", describes the various functions and components that make up a Web browser. While it is unlikely that your enterprise will be designing a customer browser, this article allows one to understand which Web2.0 technologies fit into which component, allowing for efficient and scalable Web site design.

The intent of this collection is to provide the basis and starting point from which one can delve into other topics. Other collections will focus on the specific front-end technologies, such as JavaScript, or back-end technologies, such as PHP and Ruby. Such fundamentals not only provide a window into what is being used today, but are a stepping stone for learning the best way to help contribute to future Web directions.

Wes Chou is an engineering manager in Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit. He has experience with large-scale application-aware networks and has seen load balancers placed in every possible location imaginable within a network. He serves on the Editorial Board of IT Professional.