Static Versus Dynamic Web Pages

What's the difference between a static and dynamic web page? And why should you care?

From a user's perspective, there's very little difference. However, from an actor's promotional perspective, there's an enormous difference. Here's why:

When you visit a website (any website), your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, etc.) requests each page individually from the website's server. You click on a link, and the requested page appears.

If the page you request is static HTML, this means that ALL of the data for that page is stored on the server as a 'text' file. Your browser reads the code in this file (written in ordinary text, using a language called HTML), then converts the code into a web page you can view. This is important, because text files stored on a server are available to internet search engines, which each day send automated 'robots'  (sometimes called 'spiders') wandering the web, forever cataloging the contents of each and every HTML page on the internet.

(If you want to know what HTML looks like, right click on a web page and select 'view source.')

Being indexed by these robots is how you get listed on search engines. The search engines catalog your web page in a giant database, then later, when someone types a keyword search looking for content similar to your web page, (hopefully) the search engine will offer your page as one of the results. If you seek to gain any sort of listing on the search engines, your web pages MUST be available for indexing by automated search 'robots.'

Many sites, however -- especially large sites -- don't create static HTML pages, because HTML pages take up more server space. Instead, they store all the web page information in a database. When a visitor to such a site requests to view an individual page, the data which will make up the page is delivered to a template, which is then read by the visitor's browser as a complete web page. These are called 'dynamic' web pages, generated on the fly. This presents a serious problem for internet promotion, since ALL files stored in a database are invisible to wandering search engine robots. Web pages stored in this manner will never be listed on any search engine.

How can you tell if a site uses static or dynamic web pages? Take a look in the address or location box at the top of your browser. If you see something like this:

http://www.actorsalive.org/ca/actors.asp?frm=bimap&memberID=914&tx=1049

then you can be sure the page was generated dynamically, just for you. The presence of question marks, equal signs, etc, in the URL address indicate code required by databases.

At ActorGuild.org we create static HTML pages for each member, and the Actor Directory itself is entirely static -- hence 'robot' searchable. To increase visibility of our members, we also regularly re-submit our entire site to all major and minor search engines, requesting that their robots visit us again to re-catalog all of our web pages, which are specifically designed to be search engine friendly.