Static vs Dynamic Web Pages

Difference Between Static and Dynamic Web Pages

When you browse the Internet, you use a web browser. This is an application that runs off your local computer, connected to the Internet. It requests web pages from distant web servers, and translates the HTML programming language into the familiar web page that you read, with embedded pictures. What is the difference between static and dynamic web pages?

A static web page is one that has been written once, like a word processing document, and then saved onto the web server. It’s like a file. If you could access the web server at a file system level, move the file over to your computer, and then open it up locally in your web browser, it should look exactly the same as if you looked at it through the Internet. Any changes to a static web page need to be made manually, and then saved again.

A dynamic web page is created on the fly. It doesn’t actually exist on the web server until a web browser requests it. When a request is made, web server runs whatever program will create the web page. That program creates the page dynamically and returns it to the web server, which then passes it along to the web browser.

So the main difference between static and dynamic web pages is that static pages exist on the web server, while dynamic pages are created on the fly when a web browser requests them.