Category: Uncategorized

Static Websites

In the early days of the web, almost all web sites were what is known as 'static sites.' Content (text, images, video, audio, etc), was placed or embedded in a file in which HTML tags were used to format it. If you looked at the actual contents of the file, you might see something like this:

The content and the tags lived side-by-side. To edit the page, you’d open up the file (on your own computer) in a program capable of editing HTML files and make changes to either the content or the presentation. Sometimes, each page was edited individually, even if the edits were for common elements that appeared on many pages, like menu bars.

From a technical perspective, accessing a static web site is fairly straightforward. When your computer is connected to the Internet, you can use a web browser to access files on a web server (as long as you know the address). The web server delivers the contents of those files to your browser, and your browser displays them.

Over time, as the web became more sophisticated, new systems emerged for creating and managing web sites. These moved beyond the model of placing content and HTML tags in a single file which the browser accessed and displayed. Instead, these systems were web applications – software that runs on the Web server and manages a web site, often with sophisticated features. One feature of these applications is that they separate content and presentation by storing most content (your text, images, etc.) and data about the site (the title, options, etc.) in a database.

On the web server, the web application installs program files that are written in a programming language. The server reads this code and executes requests to access data in the database (which lives on a separate server) and display it according to the instructions in the code.

The data for the site is stored in a series of tables in a database on a database server, and is entirely separate from the actual presentation of the site, which is determined by the web application. Special software on both the web server and the database server enable the two to communicate and pass information back and forth.

One of the benefits of using a seb application is that you usually don’t need to touch (or even look at!) the code in order to make changes to your content. In addition, editing the site usually involves accessing a control panel through your web browser and filling out a form, instead of having to download and edit files in software on your own computer.

Sometimes comparisons between dynamic and static content focus on whether or not the content is “fresh” (dynamic, regularly updated) or “old” (static, never updated). How frequently you update your content is unrelated to the kind of system you are using to manage your site. You might manage a static web site (as described above) and update the content every day. You may also have a dynamic web site (running in WordPress, for example) and never change the content after you create it.

Generally speaking, it is easier to regularly update content on a dynamic web site because the web application makes it easier. Sometimes, even when you just want a very basic page or placeholder, it’s easier to install a web application (and only put up a single page) than to manually create an HTML page and upload it.

Another aspect of separating content from presentation involves the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). These are special files that live on your web server and are linked to your web pages. They contain information, written in a special markup language, that defines the appearance of the HTML elements on your pages. For example, they allow you to define in a single location what all Level 1 Headings look like on your site. They are an important aspect of understanding how to separate content from presentation, but they’re also not really an aspect of the difference between static and dynamic sites. Both static and dynamic sites can use style sheets.