Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of using Dynamic or PHP as compared to Static pages? I'm trying to work out which would be best for my site but haven't worked with Dynamic pages or PHP. Thank you.

Complex issue.

The "static" pages are built once, and have a very low overhead to be served and displayed by the server. They are ideal for systems where there is a limited amount of interactive data, and the pages do not change often. The server just yanks the page off the disk, and shoves it out the port.

dynamic pages allow for user log on, changes in what is displayed to those users, or changes based on time, or search criteria. The pages are parsed every time they are displayed for every user, so there is a much higher system resource usage. A script runs, that parses the page, and fills in the values, then sends it to the user.

PHP dynamically serves all the pages, and functions as an embedded parser on top of the server. It's similar to complex SSI or emb_perl if you have worked with either of those. The server parses every page, and fills in the blanks before; sending it to the user. PHP takes the place of perl (from the server's point of view).




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How about in terms of web space usage?

In terms of disk space it would be better to use Dynamic (if you are notintending to ever build the pages ) pages. However,as DogTags explained, this is quite a server drain if you have a realisticamount of traffic.

Obviously if you are building the pages and not using static pages, then thatwould take up a lot more space than a single script.

It really depends on what you are intending to do, and how popular your siteis

Hope that helped a bit

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Also depends on the type of activity your web visitors do in your web site. If your site is not interactive, but simply calling or selecting data from tables in your database and outputting the data as is, then it wouldn't be too bad to go dynamic. If you have tons of interactivity and as pugdog mentioned, offering more interactivity and personalized options in your site will consume more server resources.

Another thing you should do is check with your web hosting company to see what their policies are in terms of running Perl scripts/PHP scripts in their web servers.
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Cheers,
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Thank you, guys. You've beeb most helpful.

::sending out virtual Christmas cookies::

So Dynamic and PHP basically does the same thing? I heard that PHP uses less server resources. Is that true? Which one would be better to use?

>>So Dynamic and PHP basically does the same thing? <<

You mean perl and php?

PHP _is_ dynamic.

I mean the Dynamic page option versus the PHP page option. I'm wondering what the difference is and which is the best to use.

Hi,

The Dynamic link will take you to a perl version, and the PHP link will take you to a php version. Both of them are really Dynamic, so I can see the confusion.

You won't see too much difference in performance. The main thing is plugins are only supported on perl, and the template syntax is quite different.

I would use the php version if you are comfortable using PHP and want to integrate it into other parts of your site, otherwise use the perl version.

Cheers,

Alex
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