Static vs Dynamic Websites: The Benefits of WordPress
Before creating a website, it’s important to learn about the differences between the two basic types: static vs dynamic. While older websites were all static, nowadays almost all businesses have come to appreciate the value of maintaining a dynamic site using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress.
Classic websites are static, which means that each page is individually coded with HTML and then uploaded to the server. The primary benefits of creating a static website are:
- the initial costs are cheaper, and
- they are easy to host in circumstances where the site’s content rarely changes.
In the long run, however, static websites can be expensive and are difficult to maintain. Ultimately, static websites can cost your business a small fortune, since even minor updates will require your business to pay a web developer to change the HTML files.
While a dynamic website may cost your business more to create, it will save your organization a significant amount of time and money over time. The reason is simple: updating a dynamic website requires absolutely no technical expertise, which means that the upkeep costs are almost nonexistent. This allows businesses to stay ahead of the curve by consistently providing relevant content to their visitors, allowing for more opportunities to form deeper relationships with their customers.
For example, it’s common for businesses to add a blog to their site using WordPress, which enables them to interact with their audience on a regular basis. Adding a blog post using the WordPress post editor or any other user-friendly CMS is extremely simple and requires no more technical knowhow than writing an email. With a static site, even posting a simple blog post would require a web developer to write a new HTML file.
Additionally, using a dynamic website allows for increased functionality which allows you to take advantage of a much wider range of features. There are thousands of free plugins that you can add to your WordPress site that can benefit your business in ways that far surpass the capabilities of a static site. This is particularly important now that it’s common for people to surf the web using their mobile devices, since you’ll have a much easier time making your site mobile-friendly if your pages are dynamic.
Since it’s easier to provide your visitors with fresh content by using a CMS, there are also SEO benefits to creating a dynamic site. One of the most important factors that search engines take into account is the frequency with which a website provides fresh content to its visitors, and this is much more feasible using a CMS than with the hard HTML files of a static site.
It’s also worth noting that dynamic websites are more aesthetically attractive and are more likely to instill a positive impression upon your visitors. In fact, the popularity of dynamic websites among businesses is so widespread that it’s rare to find a reputable company today with a static website.
