I got asked today "What are the advantages of a database driven website?"...so I thought I would put my answer or opinion to this question into a blog post.
OK, we have seen the internet host and serve static HTML websites for a number of years, these sites are still ideal for small brochure websites, advertising small businesses or services.
For businesses where content or stock is regularly changing - for example estate agents or car dealerships, a database-driven website is ideal.
So how do they work?
Basically a site framework, or template is created from which a handful of pages are built . These pages will typically contain some static content such as company contact information, company profile pages etc. Once this framework is in place, a set of dynamic pages are coded that pull the 'look and feel', or layout from the same site template as the static pages, but the content is built dynamically dependent upon some parameter passed to the page - this may be an estate agent's property id, or perhaps a car registration plate - basically anything that can then be passed to a database to uniquely identify a database record. This database data is then pulled automatically into the page and displayed.
CMS (Content Management System)
Most database driven websites have a content management system (or CMS) that can be used to maintain database content, and therefore website content. Users can upload new records, ammend existing content or delete data when it is no longer required. Some systems also have the facility to accept data from external data feeds.
Advantages
So what are the advantages?
...well the main advantage is that non-'tecchies' can update database-driven websites with no more than basic word-processing skills and some basic PC literacy. Once the data is in the website it can also be fed to external suppliers or portals such as Rightmove, Fish4Cars, Google Products, PrimeLocation etc. It is also possible to quickly create a large website should the data be readily available in a structured format.
Interested?
More information on database driven websites can be found on our main website.
OK, we have seen the internet host and serve static HTML websites for a number of years, these sites are still ideal for small brochure websites, advertising small businesses or services.
For businesses where content or stock is regularly changing - for example estate agents or car dealerships, a database-driven website is ideal.
So how do they work?
Basically a site framework, or template is created from which a handful of pages are built . These pages will typically contain some static content such as company contact information, company profile pages etc. Once this framework is in place, a set of dynamic pages are coded that pull the 'look and feel', or layout from the same site template as the static pages, but the content is built dynamically dependent upon some parameter passed to the page - this may be an estate agent's property id, or perhaps a car registration plate - basically anything that can then be passed to a database to uniquely identify a database record. This database data is then pulled automatically into the page and displayed.
CMS (Content Management System)
Most database driven websites have a content management system (or CMS) that can be used to maintain database content, and therefore website content. Users can upload new records, ammend existing content or delete data when it is no longer required. Some systems also have the facility to accept data from external data feeds.
Advantages
So what are the advantages?
...well the main advantage is that non-'tecchies' can update database-driven websites with no more than basic word-processing skills and some basic PC literacy. Once the data is in the website it can also be fed to external suppliers or portals such as Rightmove, Fish4Cars, Google Products, PrimeLocation etc. It is also possible to quickly create a large website should the data be readily available in a structured format.
Interested?
More information on database driven websites can be found on our main website.
