A static web site is like a printed brochure, it supplies the visitor with lots of information about your organization. It does not change from day to day. The same information is displayed six months from now as today.

A dynamic web site has content that changes frequently; daily, weekly, sometimes every time you refresh the screen. Examples of dynamic content are newsletters, classified ads, discussion forums.

There are 3 approaches to building a web site that has changing content:

1.  Custom designed site - in this case you have a design firm build a site and have them change content when needed. This means you pay every time you want a change on your site, or you purchase and learn the tools to change the site yourself.

2.  Custom designed web application - in this case you have a web site built that has a back-end or administrator area where you can login and change content via custom screens. This type of web application would be designed specifically to your requirements. It could require a lot of programmer time up front to build and will be expensive. Adding a new feature (like classified ads) means paying a programmer to build the new functionality and administration into the site.

3.  Content Management system - a CMS is a pre built web application specifically designed to allow a non-programmer to maintain (add/change/remove) content from the web site. The core system allows you to add any content pages you like. The system is designed to support add-on features so you can add functionality for little or no cost. This building block approach allows you to create a site with features you want without paying a programmer to create custom new items.

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