The Rise Of Static Sites

Static Sites

Let’s define what a static site here — A static website contains Web pages with fixed content. Each page is coded in HTML and displays the same information to every visitor. Static sites are the most basic type of website and are the easiest to create. Unlike dynamic websites, they do not require any Web programming or database design, and adding plugins like a commenting system is rather easy.

 

Indubitably, websites need to be three things: secure, quick and affordable. Static websites are all three. Despite CMS systems like WordPress and Wix being popular, spare a thought for static sites. Various static sites such as Jekyll, Gatsby, and Hugo are increasing in popularity for a conundrum of reasons like speed, version control, data protection, and security. Static sites like Jekyll, Hugo, and Gatsby have made it simple to quickly create all the pages a static site needs by reducing them to a handful of design templates and content folders.

 

One problem to going static used to be content management: none of the existing solutions like WordPress or Drupal work with this static-first approach. This however had changed. The fact here is that Adding Comments to Static Sites is something that applicable at this juncture.

 

A static website consists of a series of HTML files, each one representing a physical page of a website. So on static sites, each page is a separate HTML file. When you visit the homepage, you are viewing the actual homepage file. Static sites, with their speedy load times, are more assured to be preferred by search engines and rise higher in the results. And when that blog post or landing page goes viral, there’s no chance that the site will go down.

 

Static web pages are made of code that is fixed and unless the site developer makes changes, nothing will change on the page. Think of it like a brochure for a business. Static sites give a lot of the same type of information that you could get from a brochure, but it can’t just change itself. In order to do this, someone has to create a new page. That’s why static websites are sometimes referred to as brochure sites.

 

A dynamic website uses server technologies (such as PHP) to dynamically build a webpage right when a user visits the page. Basically, what happens is the user goes to a certain web address and the server finds different pieces of information that it writes into a single cohesive web page, which is what you see.

 

As you begin your web design journey, you may find yourself creating a lot of static sites first, and that’s fine. It’s best to completely understand the whole concept so that you’ll be better prepared, and have a solid base of experience to go off of.