The World Wide Web actually consists of a number of browsers or clients connected to a number of servers which provide the knowledge or data intended by the client. This goes on using the HyperText Transfer Protocol or HTTP. Here requests go from the browser to the server and the server sends a response. It is this response that we see as a website page which appears on our screen. Depending on how are these websites built, we have two types of websites namely Static Websites and Dynamic Websites.
Static Website is that website which is saved on a server in just the way in which it is supposed to be displayed. The webpage is saved on the server disk and is displayed as such when an HTTP request is made for it. This request is in form of that website’s URL. The server simply retrieves the file, opens it up and displays it. For a Static website, the code for it and the text of the website are written separately. A Static website is a collection of web pages, cascading style sheet files, image files and so on, saved on a server disk. This a simpler website as compared to Dynamic websites.
Static websites have their own advantages such as:
- The cost less as compared to dynamic websites.
- Static websites are simpler and easy to build.
- If the content that is to be displayed on the website is not changing the static website is a better choice.
- Static websites are more flexible, as in; every page on the same website can be different in look and theme.
But these days, static websites are less common because they need expertise in building them. The person building them must be well acquainted with HTML and the design methodology which is to be used to build up the website. Also, the major problem with the static website is that each time you need to make any change in it, it has to be done manually. Each page has to be dealt with by an expert and this can be very tedious.
On the other hand, we have Dynamic websites which are more prevalent these days. A Dynamic Website is one which has dynamically changing pages that are generated in real time. A page of a dynamic website is actually never present or saved anywhere as such, as is the case of a static website. In case of a Dynamic Website whenever a client or a browser sends a request in form of an URL to the server then the server does not load that page directly from its local disk(as is the case of a static website), but forwards that request to an application server. The application server builds the web page, there and then. To do so the application server may take up some information from a database or any other server-side resources. The generated HTML webpage is then sent back to the browser. Each time a Dynamic Website is loaded, it might display different information depending on a lot of factors like what time of the day it is or in which time zone is the browser. There are two ways in which a Dynamic Website can be developed. We can use client-side scripting or server-side scripting. There are a number of application servers available like Adobe ColdFusion, PHP, Classic ASP etc. Dynamic websites come with their own advantages over static websites such as
- These websites are more interactive with the user and hence more appealing.
- It is very easy to manage or edit a Dynamic Website because any change that needs to be done in the Dynamic Website can be made easily by just changing the database content. This needs no expertise.
- Their flexibility is more and can be moderated for different clients.
- In the long run, the Dynamic Website is cost effective.
- If your website requirement is such that you need to update it or change the data quite frequently then it is advised to go for a Dynamic Website.
- They help in Search Engine Optimization.
- People tend to come back to such updated and interactive websites more often.
But the Dynamic Website is a little bit complicated and costly in the initial setup phase.
Thus one should decide between Dynamic Website and Static Website depending upon your requirement and the budget in hand.
Key considerations to attract more traffic:-
Whether you have a static or dynamic website if your website is not properly managed than it will be an ignorable entity in a web world. There are some key components that should be considered for getting more traffic over a website.
- Welcome page: According to Time magazine article, a user spends an average 15 seconds over a site. This astonishing fact unravels an important outcome in itself. The first welcome page of your website should be informative enough so that user could be able to know easily what your site is going to tell him.
- Navigation: If people will find that it is time-consuming to find any useful information on the website then they will move on to other. This is the biggest failure of any website whether they may have more content as a user can’t find them more easily. Therefore, home page must be available easily so that desired information would be finding easily. Old links should be discarded if they are of no use.
- Content: Website should have valuable content but this can be achieved by some extra efforts. Inappropriate content is of no use and will urge people to move on and they will never show interest back on the website. On the other hand, good content would have visitors coming back again and again and others will also be referred to them. So, there should be regularly updated content and remove content which can be non-informative at longer. For marketing purpose, Search Engine Optimization can be used which consider included content. To make website successful content should be of high quality.
- Hosting: There should be reliable web hosting service to make website public. By using co.uk one can decide an appropriate hosting and server for his website. If anyone can have good website and server is constantly slow down then it will affect the performance of a website. There are four important things such as fonts, page layout, use of videos, security which would make a perfect website if those are properly designed. These are the starting points to get the presence of anyone website on World Wide Web.
