Hi all I want to start a review site but i was looking at templates and need to know what is the difference between static and dynamic sites and which do the search engines prefer? From what i have read i am leaning toward static, but just wanted to ask someone with more experience?
Static website is like an online brochure. The content will remain as it is till the webmaster changes something. There will be no interaction between the site and the user ad between users on the site. There will be nothing like real time communication. Displaying Flash or Splash pages does not mean that it is dynamic. Static websites are identified by their URLs eg. http://example.com/category1/xyz.html On the other hand, dynamic websites allow communication between its users like DP. Dynamic websites can be identified by their URLs. eg. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1223305 Search engines crawl both static as well as dynamic websites but static URLs have an edge over dynamic. Please note that i am saying Static URLs. Even if you have dynamic website, you can rewrite its URLs to look like static one
So is there any way i could still have forums, and the ability for users to leave messages/comments without using a static website?
I don't see why not. The forum messages would be static and therefore could use static URLs. Once posted they seldom, if ever, change. Dynamic pages tend to be pages that the content is constantly changing on, like search engine results, or catalog search results where you enter search details and the server DYNAMICALLY creates new pages as needed from a database of choices. Dynamic pages simply disappear when you close them whereas static pages can remain on the web forever. In other words, dynamic pages are created as needed from existing information generally not visible to the viewer. Static pages do not have underlying content not readily viewable. When you do a Google search, the page Google serves up to you is dynamic, made especially for you and no one else. Most of the page links that Google puts on that dynamic page are static and they are served up the same for everyone. Search engines prefer static since those page ALWAYS come up the same EVERY TIME. Dynamic pages NEVER come up the same twice in a row except by accident, making indexing them a futile experience MOST of the time. Like HOW can you index "content" that is never the same twice in a row???
I dont think it does not matter for search engine. You should have good seo friendly url for dynamic sites. For static site you should have keyword rich contents.