[Sussex] Re: Kylix

[mph at ascentium.co.uk]

OK, here goes:

A static web page is a web page that is coded up in HTML, and then put on
a web server as part of creating/updating a web site.

A dynamic web page is a web page that is created "on the fly", by some
sophisticated back-end and only written into HTML when the user tries to
access the page.

The advantages of a static web page are:

- It's easy to create
- It doesn't put much load on the server when you request it
- Because it doesn't change it can be "cached"

... caching is when either the machine requesting the page, or something
"in the network in the middle" stores a copy, and then keeps track of the
fact that it's already got an up-to-date page, so doesn't have to ask the
original server for the page. This is useful if the server in question is
either overloaded, or on the wrong side of a slow network link.

... there is a mechanism with HTTP to determine how long a "static" page
will be valid for, and when such a cache HAS to go and get a new version
anyway.


The advantages of a dynamic web page are:

- Can include personalisation information
- Can be driven by a database, say, a product database
- Can be "always up to date", say, including current information like a
share price

... however, because it HAS to be generated at time of viewing, it can't
be cached, and there is nothing that can be done at a network level to
speed up page access.

As a result of this, most _big_ websites contain a mix of static pages and
dynamic ones. As a rule of good web design, the pages a typical user might
enter "early on" in the surfing experience will be designed to be FAST,
and the pages encountered once a user is drilling down to very specific
information can trade off raw speed for lots of technical detail.

PHP is a language/technology to make it relatively simple for a programmer
to generate some, or all, of a page from out of a database. Whether than
database is about the user viewing the site (for personalisation) or about
soemthing else (such as products) is down to the site architect.

It sits in the middle ground between the "info-only" static sites, and the
"seriously high-end" sites with multi-million £ development budgets, where
tools like WebSphere, and ATG come into play. However, unless you're
expecting to sell more than £100k / week on your site AND much of your
site content is being driven by a big corporate database, I'd think that
PHP is likely to be a better bet than those products.

Regards,

Mark Harrison


> Cheers Both,
>
> That clears things up quite a lot. I'll just leave it where it is then.
>
> Though the next question is what is the difference between static and
> dynamic
> web pages ??? I've heard/seen millions of references to php but what it
> actually is/does is pretty much "white mans magic" too me at the moment.
>
> regards
>
> John D:-)
>
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