Frontend and backend, and what comes next

🏠The everyday picture

A restaurant's dining room and its kitchen. You've built a beautiful dining room with menus and helpful waiters. But no food is cooked yet, and nothing is written in the order book.

📘What it really is

Everything in Level 2 is frontend: code that runs in the visitor's browser. It decides what people see and how the page responds.
Backend is code that runs on a server (Module 7). It does what a browser can't safely do alone:
stores data in a database (bookings, messages, accounts);
checks logins and permissions;
keeps secrets like payment keys;
sends emails;
validates everything again.
That's why your contact form can check its fields, but can't yet send or save the message.
Level 3 teaches programming more deeply (JavaScript, Python and the logic behind both); Level 4 builds the backend, so your form can save messages and send emails.
Your Level 2 site is a real achievement: a multi-page, responsive, accessible, interactive site, under version control and published.

🖱️Try it

Look at your contact form and write down what would be needed for a real message to reach you: where it's sent, where it's stored, how you'd be told, how spam is stopped. Keep the list. You'll build it in Level 4.

✅Quick check

Can a static site on GitHub Pages store contact form messages by itself?

Show the answer

No. Storing data needs a backend (or a third-party form service) and a database.

Why can't a payment secret key be kept in your frontend JavaScript?

Show the answer

Every visitor downloads the frontend code, so anyone could read the key. Secrets belong on the server.