Static web page
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A static web page is a web page that always comprises the same information in response to all download requests from all users. Contrast with Dynamic web page.
It displays the same information for all users, from all contexts, providing the classical hypertext, where navigation is performed through "static" documents.
Advantages
- Quick and easy to put together, even by someone who doesn't have much experience.
- Ideal for demonstrating how a site will look.
- Cache friendly, one copy can be shown to many people.
Disadvantages
- Difficult to maintain when a site gets large.
- Difficult to keep consistent and up to date.
- Offers little visitor personalization (all would have to be client side).
[edit] Technical view
The HTML or TXT page is stored at the web server file system and is distributed (in a HTTP protocol for example) directly, as a file transfer.
[edit] Comparison details
(see Dynamic web page for more information)
In a dynamic site, pages are assembled "on the fly" as and when they are requested. Most server side languages as PHP, JSP and ASP powered sites do this technology by actively encourages dynamic content creation. Generating pages dynamically allows for all sorts of clever applications, from e-commerce, random quote generators to full on web applications such as Hotmail.
Warning: the following may be an advertisement as it is identical to the copy on Search 3W's website (http://www.search3w.com/product_be_visible.html):
In a static publishing system, HTML pages are pre-generated by the publishing software and stored as flat files on the web server, ready to be served. This approach is less flexible than dynamic generation in many ways and is often ignored as an option as a result, but in fact the vast majority of content sites consist of primarily static pages and could be powered by static content generation without any loss of functionality to the end user.
End of warning.
Benefits of dynamic publishing
At first glance, the benefits of dynamic publishing are obvious. What is frequently ignored are the benefits of static publishing, at least for content-driven sites which don't have any heavy need for dynamic features. The most obvious benefit is performance; serving static files is what web servers such as Apache are optimised to do, and they can do it fast.
The reliability advantage
A big part is that it takes the pressure off of going live. You can be sure before going live that the published website is correct. The actual CMS may explode in flames, but the site will be fine. Going live with a web application is always a stressful process, and anything that reduces the stress of that is a great benefit. As time goes on, static publishing is also a big stress reduction for the system administrator, since a simple Apache configuration is a lot more reliable under different loads and configurations than any dynamic site will be.
Performance issues
Static site will increase the performance of any website or online application. Static pages will have a ‘circular’ effect on speed: static pages will take up less load time; less load time will allow for better performance under stress, and better performance will reduce the server stress and give the user faster downloads. Note, though, that accessibility should always have a higher priority than performance.
Static over dynamic - Conclusion
Not everything needs to be dynamically created. If there are pieces of information that have quite a long dynamic cycle, embed them statically, but perhaps allow for new items to be re-embedded easily, through a pseudo-dynamic process.
