When a visitor to a website requests a particular page (by clicking on a hyperlink for instance) the HTTP server where the page is stored returns the HTML document to the user's computer and the web browser displays it. On a static web page, this is all that happens. The user may interact with the document through clicking available hyperlinks, but the document has no capacity to return information that is not pre-formatted within it. On a dynamic web page, the user can make requests (often through a form) for data contained in a database on the server that will be assembled 'on the fly' according to what is requested. For example the user might want to find out information about a theatrical performance, such as theatre locations and ticket availability for particular dates. When the user selects these options, the request is relayed to the server using an intermediary, such as PHP script embedded in the page's HTML. The intermediary tells the server what information to return. Such a web page is said to be dynamic.

A Web Site is usually made up of a series of static and dynamic pages. Dynamic pages get information from a central data source like a database and display the information on the web site. When the database changes the new content is automatically displayed in place of the old content.

Web pages that are automatically generated based on user input and activity.

dynamic HTML is a collective term for a combination of new HTML tags and options, style sheets and programming, which enable you to create web pages that are more interactive and faster to download

Pages that are created "on the fly," usually from a database. These pages may have special symbols, such as %, &, ?, and =, in the URL. Dynamically generated pages may have difficulty in achieving high RANKINGS because some SEARCH ENGINES will not crawl a URL with special symbols. Database generated pages may be created using PHP, ASP, CFML, CGI, JSP and other programming languages and scripts used on the web. See also, SPIDER TRAP. | | | | | | | | | | | | U | V | | | Y | Z

Dynamic Pages are generated (usually from a database) each time a user visits it. They are used to generate information based on certain variables (such as sales reports). See Static Pages for comparison.

Pages built using a variety of different scripting environments and/or scripting languages. Generally, any page with an extension other than .htm or .html. By default, SmarterStats considers the following extensions to be "dynamic pages": .asp, .aspx, .cfc, .cfm, .cfml, .cfmx, .cgi, .dll, .jhtm, .jhtml, .jsp, .jws, .mv, .mht, .mhtml, .php, .php3, .phtml, .pl, .shtm, .shtml, .stm, .wml, .xdl, .xhtml, .xml