In technical terms, websites fall into two broad categories:

1. those that have been developed in what is called HyperText Markup Language or HTML
2. those that use a combination of HTML and a database.

A database-supported website is one that stores its content - text, photos etc - in a database which becomes the core of the website. The alternative, which the majority of websites use, is to embed the contents of the site in individual fixed pages of computer code ie HTML.  When a user chooses to view a page in a database-supported website, that page is created "on-the-fly" because the text, images etc are drawn out of the database and presented on the screen for that user at that moment in time.  This is why these types of sites are often called dynamic websites. In contrast to this dynamic presentation of pages, an HTML-based website presents the user with fixed, static pages. 

An HTML-based website may be a more appropriate solution for an organisation than a dynamic website. Dynamic websites are more expensive to establish and maintain and the cost simply may not be justified. Many service-based organisations simply want a website that provides information on their services, staff, their history and perhaps some fact sheets or newsletters. An HTML site would be perfectly adequate for these needs.

Dynamic websites would be appropriate where there is a lot of content, such as large catalogues, or where there are many forms to be completed online by users.   A database-supported website has many advantages over an HTML-based website in these circumstances:

• By creating pages on-the-fly, a dynamic website can be very flexible in the information it presents to users. It can gather information from various parts of the website and present it on the screen. This gives a great deal of power to the users to choose what they want to see and in what format. A static, HTML site, cannot do this to the same degree as every page is set.
• Using a database is an extremely efficient solution for maintaining  content-rich websites. For example, if an organisation has numerous product lines with many variations on each and it likes to give customers the ability to select options and make up their own products, then a database-supported website is essential. To achieve  this in a static, HTML environment, would mean composing countless pages anticipating every possible combination of the products and their options. Then if one of the options had to be withdrawn or the specification changed, the content editor would have to remember every page it appeared on and make the change on every page. This is clearly inefficient and increases the chance of errors being made. 
• It allows any data submitted by users of the website, such as contact details, bookings or orders, to be stored efficiently for instant or later retrieval by staff or users themselves or by the website itself automatically. There are security implications here which are addressed in the next section.
• It enables users to search the site very effectively. When the site's content is stored in a database, users can search for images, video and audio clips or links to other sites and the occurrence of individual words or phrases. Results of searches can be made meaningful and user-friendly.

In deciding which way to go for your website, HTML or database, you may need to take into consideration that if you start with an HTML site and then decide to move to a database-supported one in another year or two, you will probably have to build it from scratch and it is likely be at least three times the cost of the HTML site.

This website is database-driven because it has over 50,000 words organised into numerous inter-related categories. We wanted a highly efficient means of maintaining and managing this content.

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