Dynamic web hosts provide website technology written in a server side programming language. This allows webmasters the opportunity to introduce an interactive element to their websites such as live forums, message boards, chat rooms, article/content feedbacks options, etc.

Dynamic programming languages include PHP, Perl and ASP and you will find a mixture of these available from web hosts.

What are dynamic web pages?

Dynamic web pages change every time they are loaded into the browser. This means if you carry out an action such as adding a comment to a forum as soon as you click on ‘submit’ the page will update and show the new changes. A dynamic forum will also update automatically every time other users make changes such as posting comments and setting up new threads.

Dynamic web pages are directly connected to a background database by the active programming language and will literally ‘grab’ information from the database every time it is changed to update automatically without needing the intervention of a web administrator. Non-dynamic pages do not allow users to make any changes and so they always look the same unless the site administrator edits and republishes them directly onto the server.

If you intend to have an interactive section to your website you will need to ensure your web host provides the necessary dynamic programming language and database support for you to set this up. Each language has its own benefits and disadvantages:

• Active Server Pages (ASP) – this programming language was developed by Microsoft and allows you to create dynamic web pages by inputting scripting codes such as VBScript and JavaScript into your HTML pages.
• PHP – this popular programming language has been developed as Open Source software and you can embed it directly into the HTML code making it quick and easy to build dynamic websites.
• JSP – this is very similar to ASP and was developed by Sun and works by placing JavaScript code into your HTML pages.