What is a static web site?
A static web site is a web site that is primarily coded using only presentational code and that offers users limited interactions with it. Presentational code includes HTML and CSS, which are the backbone languages used for presentation across the internet. By their nature, they are static: they do not offer the ability to dynamically change the data presented based on user interactions. What you see is what every user sees. In a static web site, only basic user interactions are supported, such as completing a contact form or navigating to a different page.
In a static web site, this principle is only marginally altered by the use of JavaScript as a presentational element. While JavaScript can be used to fundamentally interact with a server and present dynamic data, this is not a facility that is used within a static web site. Interaction with a static web site is limited to clicking on links to navigate to a different static page, entering information into a contact us form and otherwise basic interactions.Â
In general, static web sites have become a thing of the past. These days, most web sites are some form of web application, offering users and/or the site's administrators the ability to interact dynamically with the web site to save and change the data that is presented.