(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)
We’ve established the difference between static and dynamic websites when considering the website’s information, its operation and user interaction.
Then we compared WordPress operation to a sushi restaurant and found that sushi is good.
Let’s take a look at what static and dynamic mean with respect to the information you present on your website.
Static information
“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.” ~ Evelyn Waugh
When your information is static, your web pages don’t change content over time. You post mostly “evergreen” content, or your website is like an online brochure. Examples include corporate and academic websites.
Static websites have a lot of advantages. Once the content is written, it’s done. Consider a webpage describing a product; it only needs to be written once.
Small websites can be developed very quickly when the information doesn’t change.
Further benefits often include:
- Less expensive to host: database and server-side scripting is not necessary.
- Cheaper to develop, fewer technical skills to master.
Static information can be served statically or dynamically. There’s advantages and disadvantages to each, and the topic is worthy of it’s own discussion at some other time.
Static information on websites may still require maintenance and updating. This could range from keeping the information on the page accurate and up-to-date, to ensuring that the page layout and coding comply with current web standards. For example, I have a number of web pages using the <center> element, which is going away in HTML5. At some point (hopefully in the far future), I’ll need to recode everything wrapped in <center>.
Dynamic information
The information displayed on your website changes rapidly over time. Blogs, news and financial sites are great examples.
Wikipedia’s “Dynamic Web Page” has a narrower definition:
A dynamic web page is a hypertext document rendered to a World Wide Web user presenting content that has been customized or actualized for each individual viewing or rendition or that continually updates information as the page is displayed to the user.
However, as noted at the top of the page, this Wikipedia article isn’t very good and needs major work. Having been in an edit war on Wikipedia (long long long time before miseries came to the Earth), I’ll take a pass on attempting to improve that article. I’ll jot down some notes here instead, you can correct me here if necessary.
From a previous article, Wikipedia’s definition conflates dynamic information with dynamic interaction. Recall:
- Dynamic information: the content of the website changes. For example, Website In A Weekend updates daily.
- Dynamic interaction: The data on the website changes. For example, Google Finance doesn’t change, but the information in each of the feeds displayed on the page changes on a minute-by-minutes basis.
These distinctions may be subtle. They may also be irrelevant, so feel free to weigh in with your opinion below.
Use WordPress for static and dynamic websites
WordPress makes it easy to choose between having a static or dynamic nature as defined above.
By default, WordPress installs as a “dynamic” site, a blog allowing you to post information at will, changing what people read at any time.
On the other hand, point the front page away from the blog, and you have a “static” site. (I’ll write this up on demand, it’s easy, leave a comment.)
My guess is that Website In A Weekend readers are almost all bloggers interested in posting on a regular basis. But why guess when you can measure? Here’s a little poll, let’s find out:
[polldaddy poll=2382320]
It’s been more than a year since I wrote this, and it’s still timely, as most people do not understand the difference between static and dynamic, and why context matters in the discussion.
And it matters for design. A static site with dynamic content (i.e., financial website) may have a different performance profile than a dynamic site with static content. Given performance affects ranking, that’s something which ought to be considered during the design phase.