Web development refers to building, creating, and maintaining websites and includes aspects such as design, publishing, programming, and database management. While web designers focus on design using HTML and CSS, web developers are also involved in writing scripts in languages like PHP and ASP as well as maintaining databases. HTML uses markup tags to tell browsers how to display web pages, CSS is used to describe presentation of pages, JavaScript adds dynamic interactivity, PHP is a server-side scripting language, and WordPress is a free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL.