Dynamic websites
What are new school dynamic websites and how can they be use to improve your business ?
Dynamic websites use server programming capabilities to generate pages while static ones are made of simple HTML pages that are uploaded on the server. HTML page is basically a list of text, photos. It comes with style sheet that indicates how each element looks and where it is located.
Many web designers call HTML – programming; in reality HTML is only a form of text document.
Dynamic website benefits
Online website editing using content manager
Static websites are hard to edit – one has to download HTML page from the server, then modify its content and upload it back to the server. This can only be performed by webmaster who understands how HTML works. This means that every time you will need to update your static website you will have to contact website designer and pay him to perform changes.
Modern dynamic websites come equipped with web based content management solution or simply CMS. It provides restricted area on the website where one can edit each page, add entirely new pages and upload photos. Page content is usually stored to database located on the server. Once page is requested by website visitor it is generated in real time from the database.
To speed up real time page generation content management system is equipped with server side caching engine that stores temporal copies of page content. These copies are deleted once website content is changed. This way CMS needs to access database only once after each change.
Automated dynamic menu
Imagine that you have a website that consists of a hundred static HTML pages. If you decide that you need another section in navigation menu you would need to edit each of your hundred pages since each one of them would contain static menu.
Dynamic websites store page structure in the database and if you’ll add another page to navigation menu it will automatically appear in other pages as menu is also generated in real time on the server.
Dynamic news engine
News or blog engine is a service that allows adding news articles that are displayed as a list ordered by date. In some cases a small version of that list is also displayed in side column of each page. This is only possible using dynamic website approach; otherwise you would have to edit each page every time new news article is added.
Each news article usually contains comment section at the bottom – another dynamic feature. Once visitors write their comments they can be previewed in content manager. Only those comments that are confirmed by website administrator are displayed on the site.
Unique relevant content for each dynamic page
Search engines favour pages that have unique content and links to other pages relevant to that page. If you have a large website it might be difficult to find all the relevant content for each page.
For this reason dynamic script can be implemented, it would search through all the pages in the database and collect most relevant ones; then generate a dynamic list. We have developed such feature and implemented it to our side column.
Dynamic product listings
Web based product administrator is usually used for product management. All you need to do is add your new product there, choose appropriate category and product listings and details would be generated dynamically.
Search on your website
Search service is useful when one has many pages on the site as information that website visitor is looking for might be hard to find using navigation menu. Search is only available for dynamic website as server has to check each page in the database.
Apart of performing a simple search our service also evaluates what pages are more relevant to chosen search term. Search listings are sorted by relevancy.
Dynamic information from other servers
If weather forecast or currency exchange calculator is needed we have to write a code that would contact third party server to get updated information. This again can only be achieved using server side scripting.
Conclusion – Static vs. dynamic websites
Static websites are only useful if you are planning to have several pages. However without any administration such site will give you practically no benefit whatsoever as search engines will always position those sites that continuously provide fresh content first.
Dynamic websites enable possibilities to develop sites that change frequently. They are easy to edit since most services are generated automatically.
We only focus on developing dynamic websites as there’s nothing worse than building sites that don’t work.
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Fernando Avirez from Panama
Date: 11/26/2009 11:19:00 AM
"... benefit whatsoever as search engines will always position those sites that continuously provide fresh content first."
Very good info. Then it's clear that dynamic is the only solution. There is ork to be done then!