Do you need dynamic pages?
I'm currently inserting the pictures into my AdSense case study, but more on that later today. In a previous posting, Sometimes having a dynamic site can be handy, I talked about some of the advantages of dynamic vs. static pages. Let's explore this topic a bit more, because I know many of my readers don't fully understand the differences. And I can show off how I can automatically add a copy of my AdSense book to a visitor's Amazon shopping cart simply by having them click a link. (Don't worry, it doesn't actually order the book on your behalf — you still have to checkout. If you click the link and don't want the book, just delete it from your shopping cart. I won't be offended, promise!) If you're reading this directly on the MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com site, you'll see the same link in the righthand column.
So what's the difference between a dynamic page and a static page? A page is “dynamic” if it's generated dynamically in response to a browser request. A “static” page, on the other hand, just sits there on the web server and gets copied down to the browser whenever a browser requests it. In other words, a dynamic page has some programming code behind it, while a static page is just a file. That's really the crucial difference: if the web server doesn't do anything but copy a file, the page is static. If the web server runs some code, possibly even embedded right in the file representing the page, the page is dynamic.
I didn't really go into any of this in my book, of course, because the book promised that you could build a money-making site or blog with no coding required. So talking about dynamic pages would go against that promise. But dynamic pages are everywhere on the Web, so it's not really a topic you can ignore. Almost every blog is run with dynamic pages, for example.
You can usually identify dynamic pages by looking at the URL of the page. If it ends in something like “.php”, “.jsp”, “.asp” or “.pl”, then it's a dynamic page — those suffixes (extensions) mean that there's some programming code embedded right in the page that the web server runs before sending the result down to your browser. The code gets stripped out of the page, of course, so that all you see on your end is HTML. But all or some of that HTML will have been generated by the code especially for you.
Sometimes you can tell that a page is dynamic based on the first part of the URL. Most of Amazon's pages are dynamic, you can tell by the “http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/” part of the URL. But you can't always tell. This site and my personal site, EricGiguere.com, both use dynamic pages, but I've configured the web servers to hide that fact. (Honestly, I don't know why more sites don't do that and give their pages a more human-readable — and memorable — URL. Those Amazon URLs are a travesty.)
Although they're more complicated to create, you can do some nice things with dynamic pages. My Amazon order page (order the book now!) sends me mail whenever someone uses it to order my book and then uses the Amazon Web Services (AWS) to actually place the order. (If you're a techie and you want to learn more about AWS, read the tutorials I wrote for IBM).
The downside to dynamic pages, of course, is that dreaded word: programming. If you're non-technical, I'm sure it doesn't appeal. But it doesn't take much to get things going, especially if you want to incorporate data from another site like Amazon. Look at the feedbuzzard store Rick Blythe put together. Some coding “glue” and some calls into Amazon's web services (there's lots of information and tools out there to help you do it) and bam, a dynamic site.
When you find yourself limited by what you can do with static pages, take some time to learn about building dynamic pages. There are many choices of programming languages available, and some are definitely easier than others. See what your web hosting service provides in terms of dynamic page support and add-on tools. It's probably a lot easier than you think to get started.
Eric Giguere is the author of Make Easy Money with Google, a real (printed!) introductory AdSense book for non-technical people, available at all fine bookstores. Be sure to download the free sample chapter for more information about the book. Or add it directly to your Amazon shopping cart!