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Dynamic Web Sites
In the case of dynamic Web sites (a.k.a. database-driven Web sites, or Web
applications), page content is generated based on some
information usually stored in a database or resulting from processing the inputs
provided by the Web site visitor. This information , and thus the corresponding
pages, can be changed by you and/or the visitor at any time.
The pages are called "dynamic" because their content is generated
"on the fly" each time a page is requested by the Web site visitor. Of
course, typically dynamic Web sites also have some static pages, too.
Next, we will walk you through several examples to get you familiar with what
can be achieved with dynamic Web sites. You can also jump to the summary
section.
First Example
Diana and Tom are music teachers. They both give piano and violin lessons
to children. They have a number of dedicated students who come for lessons every
week. But they also offer ad-hoc tutoring, especially for children playing in
school orchestras that need more help before a scheduled concert for parents.
Scheduling such ad-hoc lessons is time consuming: it usually requires several
phone calls between them and parents to confirm availability.
Tom and Diana want to have a Web site describing and advertising their
piano and violin lessons. In addition, they want potential students or their
parents to be able to see available time slots and schedule lessons using an
online calendar. Both Tom and Diana would each enter their already scheduled
classes into the calendar and would also like to block some time as not
available. Additionally, they want to be able to see who is scheduled for any
day and time, but they don't want anybody else see such details: the
"publicly visible" calendar should just display time availability.
Implementing such online calendar with scheduling capabilities requires pages
with dynamically generated content. Additionally, part of the Web site will have
to be protected with a special password so the access to it would be limited
only to Diana and Tom.
Second Example
An online store is a common example these days. Many existing stores want to
have Internet presence. Roughly speaking, there are three approach to online
presence for stores:
 | Online store info - Web site contains only basic information about the
store and offered products. Shoppers have to either visit the store in
person or order a paper catalog.
Static Web site will be just fine for this approach. |
| Online catalog - clients can browse the catalog, see details of each
catalog item, but they can't place online orders.
Although online catalog could be built as a static Web site, this is not
a practical approach because frequent changes required to keep the catalog
up to date will quickly surpass the cost of building dynamic Web site. |
| Online shopping - clients can browse and order products online. This means
that the Web site not only provides the catalog of products, but also
implements an "online shopping cart" that simplifies online
purchasing.
Such Web sites are typically built as dynamic, database-driven sites. |
To summarize, if any of the below conditions apply, you will most likely need a dynamic Web
site:
| You have to change your main pages frequently because you want to have
people coming back to your site. |
| Products and/or services your company offers change frequently. This
especially applies to stores. |
| You want to be able to quickly change product prices, mark some products
as being on sale, offer special promotions, mark recently added items as new
and automatically show new products on special pages, etc. |
| You will be frequently adding new products/services and removing some of
the existing ones. |
| The list of your products or services is too long - time (and therefore
cost) spent for developing the corresponding static pages would be larger
than developing Web site based on a database of products and dynamically
generated pages describing products. |
| You need to have a more complex ordering system capable of supporting one
or more of the following functions:
 | checking availability of items against the stock, |
| maintaining the stock, |
| tracking orders with order status (like received, shipped, on
back-order, etc.), |
| paying online with automated credit card transactions, |
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| You Web site is to have advanced search capabilities, for example, by
product brand name, by price range, by product specifications or parameters,
by service type and time availability, etc. |
| You want to track your customers and possibly offer personalized services
for them. For example, if a person bought a camera, you may want to show her
or him matching equipment that is currently on sale. Or you want your
clinic's Web site to pickup the assigned doctor when scheduling a new
appointment. |
| Your Web site should do the mapping of customer needs to available
services. This includes many different opportunities like online doctor
appointment system, finding available time for music lessons, pre-selecting
services based on several questions asked, at many more. |
| The Web site accepts some inputs from a visitor, processes it and
generated the resulting page. In some cases, such processing could also
modify some information in the database permanently affecting content some
other pages show. For example, this includes a Web site that enables the
visitor to find and book an available time slot for a music lesson; once
booked, this time slot would not be shown as available to other visitors. |
| You need to connect your Web site to the existing back-end system. |
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