dynamic websites vs. static websites?

Answer 1

Static websites is strictly HMTL. Basically, a webpage has certain content that displays everytime someone visits it.

Dynamic is different. Basically, a webpage is made differently when the content is updated. Dynamic pages have to do with databases.

For instance, lets say that there is a site devoted to recipes. I can make a site that has a seperate page for every recipe I want.

BUT, let's say that my users want to submit their own recipes! Then what happens is that they submit those recipes, they get stored into a database, then those recipes could be eventually brought up into its own page!

Thats the difference. Static is whatever is there is there. Dynamic allows the site to change over time!

Answer 2

Good question!

A static website is like a printed page on paper, stored somewhere on a web server. When someone requests that page through explorer or Firefox, the page content and format does not change, unless the author goes in and manually edit the text (in HTML format), which takes time and does not get done very frequently.

On the other hand, a dynamic page, is a page that is generated by a computer program every time someone requests that page. For example, this page in Yahoo answers is a dynamic page. When you click anywhere on that page, you activate a program on the yahoo server, and that program goes in a huge database to create a web page with the latest information.

After reading that page, if you or another user of that page enters information (like clicking to vote on the best answer), the web program at Yahoo will update its database and the next time that page is called-up, it will show the latest information.

A blog is another form of dynamic page, as the blog owner add information, the web page generated will change to include that information when the page is requested next time.

Answer 3

pros and cons?

Dynamic - easy editing and content updates. using a template structure helps you to keep your site uniformed; and if you work with a database, all you need to do is update using a backend.

static - constant editing if you want to update. each page is its own design, so if your pages have the same element throughout, you'd have edit each page sepearately.