Chapter 1. Dynamic Content and the Web

There are two types of web pages: static and dynamic. A static site provides hyperlinked text and perhaps a login screen, but beyond that, it doesn't require additional participation from the user. http://www.startribune.com is an example of a static site, except that you do have to register to view articles. http://www.amazon.com is an example of a dynamic web site, because your ordering data is logged, and Amazon offers recommendations based on your purchasing history when you access their page. In other words, dynamic means that the user interacts more with the web site, beyond just reading pages, and the web site responds accordingly.

Creating dynamic web pageseven a few years agomeant writing a lot of code in the C or Perl languages, and then calling and executing those programs through a process called a Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Having to create executable files doesn't sound like much fun, and neither does learning a whole new complicated language. Well, thankfully, PHP and MySQL make creating dynamic web sites simpler, easier, and faster.