Static Website vs Dynamic Website

When approaching the development of a website we always have to make the choice between building a static or dynamic website. Despite for most projects this choice is determined by type and purpose of the website, sometimes this choice is not obvious from the beginning.

Just to clarify with static website we mean a website that doesn’t have a content management system, hence every time something needs to be updated, such updates must be done manually by the person who manages the website. With dynamic website we mean a website whose contents are managed via a content management system that allows the administrator to add new content, modify the existing content, manage the various sections of the site and, generally speaking, manage everything without the need to manually edit the HTML files of the website.

Then you might wonder why someone would opt for a static website: well the answer is pretty easy, developing a static website takes a lot less time than creating a dynamic one. You create the graphics for the website layout, you build a HTML/CSS layout, duplicate it for every page and replace the content.

No doubt this can be a very time and cost effective solution for short term projects. Sometimes you are forced to develop a static website because there’s no time to build a dynamic one. This often happens when there’s a scheduled event and a website must be ready before the event. In such cases you have no choice ( unless you are very familiar with an open source content management system and you would be able to customize it in record breaking time ).

Static websites use less resources than dynamic websites, but this is just a stupid comparison as caching systems are there for when you need to optimize resource usage on dynamic websites. I can’t really find other pros for static websites.

Dynamic websites have a wide spectrum of advantages that makes them come out ahead hands down against static websites.

Their management doesn’t require a technical person: anybody can manage the contents of the website via a content management system that usually has an administration area from where the administrator can manage the contents displayed on the website. This makes a dynamic website cheaper in the long run because you won’t have to pay when you want to update the contents.

Dynamic websites can be programmed to do exactly what you want them to do. For example: would you like users to be able to review the albums or tracks of your band? And you want these reviews to be displayed on your website? And maybe you even want to approve them before they go live? No problem, you can display a form where they enter the review. Once they hit the submit button the review is stored into the database. At this point your dynamic website sends you an email alert to inform you that someone sent a review: you log into the administration area and, with a single click of a button, you can approve/reject the review.

This is just an example but the possibilities are truly endless: with a dynamic website you can achieve exactly what you need, with an administration area to manage every aspect of your website in few clicks. If you have no clue where to start you might consider hiring a talented web developer or a web development firm.

With a dynamic website you can build reporting interfaces into your own administration area: few examples could be a report of how many of the total visitors navigate to the contact page, and how many of those actually submit a message; if you have an online store you could be interested to know how many products people have purchased in a category, during a specific week or month, which are the most viewed pages or products, or which are the worst selling products in order to change something on that page. As you see there are countless possibilities with a dynamic website, and additional features can be added later after the website has been launched.

In conclusion a static website can be a cost effective solution to a short term need, but if your website will be used a lot, its contents will be updated or if you want to control aspects that go beyond the basic visitors statistics, a dynamic website is by far the best solution: it will be cheaper in the long run and enables you to build a tool that evolves with the needs of your business or activity.

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