Originally posted on Quora

Well, actually there is only one language!

And that is HTML: HyperText Markup Language.

Version 5 (e.g. HTML5) has been the thing since many years. It’s a living standard, e.g. constantly evolving but the base has been constant for years.

Google will give you this information. All other languages you’ll find are just ‘wrappers’ around HTML. Like PHP, ASP, Ruby (on Rails), etc. These languages all generate HTML. Typically using a framework specifically for that. This generating is done on the server and then HTML is sent to the client (e.g. your browser) which ‘only’ understands HTML*.

By generating HTML you can give dynamic (HTML) content (e.g. a web application) rather than static (HTML) content (e.g. a website).

*I said HTML is the only language. Well HTML is the frontend language. But there are actually two more: called CSS and JavaScript. HTML is used to define your content: text, images and perhaps a video or some audio. To style this content you can define layout in CSS, which is a styling language. You literally link to this CSS (file) in your HTML (file). And to add some (client-side) interactivity you can add JavaScript, which is an actual programming language (e.g. HTML is NOT a programming language; it’s a markup language). Javascript has actually gotten new versions since years and is a - perhaps - suprisingly powerful and functional language (EcmaScript2018 will be out). So programmers have started it to use it not only on the client (through the browser), but on the server as well since 2010-ish (NodeJS).

Besides the server side frameworks (for server side languages) there are also some client side frameworks/libraries for HTML, CSS and JavaScript like Bootstrap, UIKit and Angular, React, etc. These frameworks are not languages in themselves; they are collections of content, styling or code written in one of the languages, which you can reuse so you won’t have to reinvent the wheel.

There’s a whole world behind it. Your question might even be considered a bit naive in its simplicity, but please find and read good material online on these 3 languages or some of these frameworks or serverside languages. You can even make a good career out of it.

If you just want a website or blog without the hassle of digging into this, you can try out Wordpress or similar Content Management System (CMS). But don’t expect this to give you a career; more likely you’ll end up paying a bit here and there (or end up with a spammy and slow site).