In this post I will go through the difference between a static and dynamic website and in what scenario one approach is better than the other.
So, what’s a static website?
A static website is a website that is self-contained. A static website does not need external dependencies like a web server, database or a scripting language like PHP to run. In a static website all files are self-contained in folder that can be executed only using a web browser.
What’s a dynamic website?
A dynamic website is a website that is built using a scripting language like PHP, Java, Python, etc. These websites typically need a web server with special configurations, a database to store the content and server-oriented script interpreter to convert the code to HTML format. WordPress is the most popular dynamic web platform.
What are Pros of having a static website?
Performance
A static website because it doesn’t need a database or server-side processing language is typically very fast to load. You can make a static website load in milliseconds instead of seconds.
Reliability
Static websites because they are self-contained and there is not much processing happening on the web server where they are hosted on, they are very reliable. They can be hosted anywhere very cheaply and in sometimes even for free.
Security
Static websites cannot be hacked, because there is no admin panel to login to. Of course, hackers can hack the server where the HTML files are being hosted on, but if you host the files in an environment like Amazon S3 or Azure Storage the chances of someone doing that are very slim.
Cleaner Code
Because most static websites are custom coded, they tend to have less unnecessary code, which is why they are fast. For example, a WordPress site has a lot of unnecessary code from templates and built-in components within the WordPress system that your site doesn’t need to run, but because it is inherit from the system they are loaded with your site.
What are the Cons of having a static website?
Website Updates
Updating a static website is not as easy as updating a dynamic website built in WordPress for example. Even though we at Boston Techies can make the process of updating your static website easy and painless, it won’t never be as easy as typing in a text editor like WordPress is. So, if you need to constantly update your website, this is something you need to think about.
Less customization options
All modern websites are built using three web components HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When building a website with a dynamic platform like WordPress you don’t have to work with any of these web components directly, all customizations can be done through an interface that allows you to drag and drop things as you customize them, when building a static website you need to work with the code directly because there is no interface which can be intimating for people that are not familiar with web coding.