Many of us have heard about Static as well Dynamic websites but do not have any clue what these websites are or any other important information. In this article, I will try to explain the two popularly known websites in brief. At first, I would want to convey that the majority of websites running are dynamic. Like e-commerce websites, social media websites that we extensively use such as Facebook and Twitter. To be clearer with these two websites, kindly keep reading the article further as I would even be disclosing how one can find differences between these two websites.
A static website mainly consists of three main elements maintained. These three elements are known as .html file, .css file and .js file. But in these three important files, the last two are not that essential to be considered. In here the pre-written code which is none other than the combination of these three files is always the same for every user present out there unless and until the user or the owner make a relevant change. Also, the action made as the preference of the very user cannot affect the code initially written for the purpose. The whole idea of this website does not limit your interaction with the website. This simply implies that your action will be visible to the next user who will be visiting the website. For example, if you change the colour from blue to while the next user visiting will see the white colour, not the blue.
People always have an assumption about a static website that it is not at all interactive to the users as there is no proper graphics available. But this is not at all true as the static website is mostly a tech term and not that most of us simply assume. Yes, one can probably say that this website however follows a tech structure overall.
Now both static as well dynamic websites are stored in servers that are nothing but specialized computers. This is done mostly for online visitors so that they can reach these websites through their used browsers. In this case, the browser requests the code and even the other files such as the images from the server. So when the browser achieves everything including code then it shows the processed result to the user in response to their respective search.
Now for the people who are unaware of what a code is then it’s nothing but written instruction for the browser of how a website or anything else can be presented to the user visiting. Also in the case of a static website the code is only sent once to the server. This is done because a static site is not overall connected with the database to store the data retrieved when particularly needed.
Now moving to the next website which is known as the Dynamic website. Here the code is kind of written in the server-side language such as PHP or the node JS. so that is the reason the content we see here is developed dynamically with the request and that is why it can be different from user to user. To keep it understandable a dynamic website interacts with the database and here the user can simply affect the code as many times as possible based on the input provided. I hope the initial difference between the two websites is a bit clear.
Just remember the fact that here too the browser receives an HTML code but that is not pre-written. In place of that, it is created by server-side programming language. To explain it more precisely let us see an example of a widely used Facebook platform. As when you open your account you see your homepage and feed but if someone else opens their account they will see theirs, not yours. Simple right.
Now moving further a Dynamic website needs a database to operate which is an essential demand. Without this things would not be operating as smoothly as they use to carry up in a dynamic website.
How to identify whether a site is Static or Dynamic?
I know most of the people reading this article were waiting for this very part as it’s something one should know. So you can visit almost any site out there and check for some specific technologies that can easily reveal whether it’s static or dynamic.
Some common technologies used in static websites are:
Gatsby
Hugo
Jekyll
Gridsome
Scully
Sculpin
Sapper.
Some common technologies used in dynamic websites are:
PHP
WordPress
Joomla
Drupal
Conclusion:
I hope the information been shared above was useful to all my readers out there.
