So, you’ve decided that you would like an affordable website designed, you’ve got your budget sorted and you’re ready to get your website designed and built. You start ringing around web development companies, and get asked the question "would you like a static or dynamic website?". You pause for moment and think to yourself "why are they asking me this question? Why would anyone want a boring static website design when they can have a vibrant, cutting edge, dynamic one?".

Of course, all businesses want a nice looking and professional website. However, businesses will have different requirements. One business may just need a simple one page brochure website with no special functionality, which rarely needs be updated. Another business may require a large 1000 page website with ecommerce and extranet functionality, which needs to be updated every day.

The question "would you like a static or dynamic website?" has nothing to do with how your website looks (don’t worry, a lot of people make that mistake), but rather the functionality that it will offer.

What is a static website?

A static website is one where the content is always the same and only changes when someone edits the web pages on the server by changing the hard-coded HTML (the language that is used to create web pages) in the server files.

In other words, the server makes no changes to the web pages before they are viewed by the user; the user clicks on a link to a particular page on the website, and the server simply gets the page and sends it to the user’s browser.

The main advantage of this is that any web developer can quickly and easily make changes to the website because they don’t need to learn how to use any specific software (unlike when you have a site with a specific CMS (Content Management System), which requires a web developer that it familiar with it).

The main disadvantage of this type of website is that you are reliant on someone else to do any changes to the website content for you, which means that you have to pay for content changes and you might not be able to get them done as quickly as you might like.

What is a dynamic website?

A dynamic website is one where the content is generated ‘on-the-fly’ by the server whenever a user requests a page using their browser. The content is usually stored in a database rather than in files as with a static website. The content can change without human intervention between visits or page refreshes, but it doesn’t have to change to be a dynamic website.

The content on a dynamic website can consist of content created by the business (or a third party working on their behalf), content gathered from other websites via feeds or a combination of the two.

So, the main difference between a dynamic and a static site is that on a dynamic website the server has to generate/fetch content from other sources and create the web pages as and when they are requested before they are sent to the user, whereas with a static site the server simply gets the requested web page from a single file and sends it to the user’s browser unchanged.

The main advantage of a dynamic website is that it allows a business to use software to perform various tasks such as editing the website content, thus eliminating the need to rely on professionals to make the changes for you. It also allows you to add a plethora of functionality to your website such as a search facility, a shopping cart, news feeds, language translation and much more.

The main disadvantage of having a dynamic website is that you have the added cost of maintaining and getting support for the additional software that you are using. Also, you will be restricted to only using professionals that are familiar with the software you are using to provide the maintenance and support.

That’s all well and good, but which one is right for me?

To determine which type of website is best for you, ask yourself these two questions:

• Will you need to update the website more than once a month?

• Is there any special functionality that you need it to have such as a search facility or a shopping cart?

If you answered yes to either of those questions, then a dynamic CMS driven website is probably the best choice for you. Otherwise, a static website might be the better choice for you, although you may want to still consider using a basic CMS as your circumstances could change in the near future, particularly if you are a growing yet small business.

If you would like further advice on what is the best solution for your website, then please contact us and we’ll be more than happy to discuss your options.