Web sites: static versus dynamic

Websites typically have one of two structures:

• Static web pages
• Dynamic web pages

A website is typically made up of all static pages, or all dynamic pages.

It is possible for a website to combine static pages with dynamic pages, but this would be an exception requiring an exceptional reason.

Static web pages

• Each web page represented by a single text file
• File has extension .htm or .html
• File contains HTML (often CSS and JavaScript as well)
• File can be edited in text editor
• Manage files using File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Dynamic web pages

• Dynamic in either or both of two ways:

• • Client-side dynamic
  • Server-side dynamic

Dynamic web sites can be either or both.

Sites that use both are typically use Ajax.

Client-side dynamic

• Page content is generated and modified by in the web browser (the client)
  • Web browsers run JavaScript
  • Typically implemented using library or framework, for example:
    • jQuery
    • AngularJS
• File can be edited in text editor
• Manage files using File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Server-side

• Content is generated by a server-side program
  • Web pages are generated by the program -- in effect, the program is a "URL engine"
  • There are no individual files for individual web pages
• Typically a content management system, using database such as MySQL

See also

• Dynamic web page