Web sites can be classified into two major categories; static and dynamic.


Static Web sites

Web sites on the Internet providing you with nothing more than just information presented on HTML (.htm or .html) Web pages with navigation are usually static sites. This is because the technology that they are based on is static. Such Web sites have a set of Web pages that contain all the content and the content structure predefined into them by the designers. The content of these Web sites cannot be changed, customized or personalized by the visitors of the Web site. Such Web sites don’t utilize no database or any other such technology that dynamically builds up their pages or content at runtime based on their visitors input or their preferences.

The following diagram shows how static Web pages are served when a client (Web browser program) sends a request to the Web server (the machine hosting the Web site) for a particular page.

The detail of the lines numbered in the diagram is as follows:

1. 
   

   The Web browser sends a request for a particular Web page of a Web site to the Web server hosting that site.

   
   


2. 
   

   The Web server searches for the page in directory containing Web pages for the Web site.

   
   


3. 
   

   On finding the requested page, the Web server collects the HTML of the Web page.

   
   


4. 
   

   The Web server sends the HTML to the requesting browser which then parses it to develop the visual presentation of the page. 

   
   

Figure 1: Shows the serving process for static Web pages.