Step 5 – Static vs. Dynamic

Now that you’ve purchased your web hosting package, it’s time to make an important decision. It’s now time to decide how your website will be coded.

Websites have traditionally been coded using HTML.  HTML stands for “HyperText Markup Language”.  Each webpage within a website is actually a single document.  All of these documents together are considered the website.  HTML coding consists of specific HTML tags.  Web browsers use the information embedded within the HTML tags to display the webpage when a visitor visits a webpage.  For the purposes of this page, we’ll consider these traditional types of websites that use HTML coding as “static websites”.

The web is changing and most new websites are using a new type of “coding” over HTML. These new types of websites rely on a myriad of coding to produce the webpage that you see.  Websites that implore this type of structuring are generally referred to as CMS websites.  CMS stands for Content Management System.  This type of website relies on snippets of code to be assembled when a visitor visits a webpage. This means that these pages are not static documents but rather dynamic webpages that are built when called upon.  To the webpage visitor though, there is no visible difference between the static HTML page and the dynamic CMS page.  But on the backend there is a huge difference.

HTML vs. CMS

In order to create a website using a static HTML format, you must learn HTML.  This can be a huge learning curve.  Not only do you need to know HTML, but you will also need to learn and have access to an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop, have a text editing program, like Adobe Dreamweaver, and have a FTP program (File Transfer Protocol).  These requirements are what usually keeps people from building their own websites, forcing them to seek a professional to do it for them.  But as I said earlier, the web is changing with the new CMS structure allowing more and more people to be their own webmaster.

CMS websites have taken the upper hand in web development.  There are several reasons for this.  For starters, to have a CMS website doesn’t require you to be an accomplished web designer.  You don’t have to know even a line of HTML coding (though it helps).

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