Editing Web design (section)

=== Generated content ===
There are two ways websites are generated: statically or dynamically.

==== Static websites ====
{{Main|Static web page}}
A static website stores a unique file for every page of a static website. Each time that page is requested, the same content is returned. This content is created once, during the design of the website. It is usually manually authored, although some sites use an automated creation process, similar to a dynamic website, whose results are stored long-term as completed pages. These automatically created static sites became more popular around 2015, with generators such as [[Jekyll (software)|Jekyll]] and [[Adobe Muse]].<ref>{{Cite web
  | last = Christensen| first = Mathias Biilmann
  | title = Static Website Generators Reviewed: Jekyll, Middleman, Roots, Hugo
  | website= Smashing Magazine| access-date = 2016-10-26| date = 2015-11-16
  |url=https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/static-website-generators-jekyll-middleman-roots-hugo-review/
}}</ref>

The benefits of a static website are that they were simpler to host, as their server only needed to serve static content, not execute server-side scripts. This required less server administration and had less chance of exposing security holes. They could also serve pages more quickly, on low-cost server hardware. This advantage became less important as cheap web hosting expanded to also offer dynamic features, and [[virtual machine|virtual server]]s offered high performance for short intervals at low cost.

Almost all websites have some static content, as supporting assets such as images and style sheets are usually static, even on a website with highly dynamic pages.

==== Dynamic websites ====
{{Main|Dynamic web page}}
Dynamic websites are generated on the fly and use server-side technology to generate web pages. They typically extract their content from one or more back-end databases: some are database queries across a relational database to query a catalog or to summarise numeric information, and others may use a [[document database]] such as [[MongoDB]] or [[NoSQL]] to store larger units of content, such as blog posts or wiki articles.

In the design process, dynamic pages are often mocked-up or [[website wireframe|wireframe]]d using static pages. The skillset needed to develop dynamic web pages is much broader than for a static page, involving server-side and database coding as well as client-side interface design. Even medium-sized dynamic projects are thus almost always a team effort.

When dynamic web pages first developed, they were typically coded directly in languages such as [[Perl]], [[PHP]] or [[Active Server Pages|ASP]]. Some of these, notably PHP and ASP, used a 'template' approach where a server-side page resembled the structure of the completed client-side page, and data was inserted into places defined by 'tags'. This was a quicker means of development than coding in a purely procedural coding language such as Perl.

Both of these approaches have now been supplanted for many websites by higher-level application-focused tools such as [[content management system]]s.  These build on top of general-purpose coding platforms and assume that a website exists to offer content according to one of several well-recognised models, such as a time-sequenced blog, a thematic magazine or news site, a wiki, or a user forum. These tools make the implementation of such a site very easy, and a purely organizational and design-based task, without requiring any coding.

Editing the content itself (as well as the template page) can be done both by means of the site itself and with the use of third-party software. The ability to edit all pages is provided only to a specific category of users (for example, administrators, or registered users). In some cases, anonymous users are allowed to edit certain web content, which is less frequent (for example, on forums – adding messages). An example of a site with an anonymous change is Wikipedia.