Interactivity

An "interactive" web page allows the visitor to literally "interact" with it; most websites are "minimally interactive" because they have hyperlinks (the most common form of web interaction) - the user clicks on a link and the web page takes them there. Other minimal interactivity are Hover-over features - the user mouse hovers over a word or graphic and it changes how it looks.

Interactivity can be very advanced. Forms are among the most advanced technique for interactivity and can be used for everything from providing a simple communication from the user that sends an email to the site owner, to litterally changing the data a page displays.

Static vs Dynamic Web Content
Static web content:

Static web pages do not change in any way once they are coded. This page is a static web page. I wrote it, put it online and it will look the same forever.  The text will always say exactly what I am typing now until I, or another authorized web master, physically changes the page.

This is fine for those who don't intend to change or update their site, or those who have a webmaster on staff (or in the family). But I have had many customers who want the ability to at least update the text on their web pages themselves. And this would involve making the page "dynamic" (giving it the ability to alter itself on the fly based on certain coded commands).

Dynamic web content

Dynamic web pages are what makes the web so powerful. They change themselves automatically depending on the type of data they are initially coded to display.

For example, consider an e-commerce site that sells buttons. The company has thousands of buttons of different sizes, colors and styles in their inventory. To statically code pages to display the descriptions and a picture of each size, color or style of button would take months of full-time coding and hundreds of pages to display. Then, if one style is out-of-stock, the web master would have to locate on which of hundreds of pages that particular button is coded in order to remove it.

The dynamic technique, uses one page of code to generate each page automatically and on the fly.

Dynamic pages can either display data that is within a database or data entered into a form.

Form driven web content:

Blogs and forums are form driven dynamic websites. The page is constantly, and instantly, changing as visitors (guests/members) type their response (or "post a reply") into the form at the page bottom. They also use a database to save the all of the "threads" of a particular topic thereby allowing them to be viewed and replied to over and over.

Just consider that for a moment...

If this were a blog or forum, you could reply to what I am saying here by typing into a form and your reply would suddenly be added to the page forever (or until you or I wanted to delete it).

That is powerful! Blogs and forums are generally used for entertainment or personal websites. They are not generally used in business or e-commerce websites. But the coding that makes them dynamic is perfect for creating an "Owner Management Section".

An owner management section would include a form based page corresponding to each page on the website. The owner would have the ability to change any text on a page, upload or delete photos and change text-based links, all by simply typing into that pages form. The actual web page that the public sees would instantly change to reflect any such changes.

Dbase driven web content

There is nothing quite so powerful for business as being able to provide customers the ability to search a database of inventory. A database must be kept constantly up to date to reflect the current availability of stock. Many firms hire people whose sole job is to maintain the firm's database ... update new products, remove discontinued products, reflect price changes and all the other crucial details of a given product.

Databases can be maintained locally, on the firm's office servers, off-site, in a location specifically maintained as a "data warehouse", or online, using the firm's web host servers.

Each has its pros and cons. For security, storing data locally is preferred. For speed when data is distrubuted to multiple office around the Country or even Internationally, a Data Warehouse is preferred. And for serving a website, a local database that uploads "data dump" updates hourly, or daily to a web server is best.