A Database-Driven Site

So you have a good looking site. You've taken a lot of time to get it right and everybody seems to like it. After they visit, how often do they come back? In the web-world, we call this being "sticky". To get "sticky", the site needs to change. To do this you have to do things on the site which cause things to become "dynamic". Since this is the focus of SitesDynamic, let's dig deeper into it. To be a dynamic site, information on your site needs to change on a continual basis. How continual? At the exact interval you expect a customer to return. You need to do this so they look forward to coming back. The information is new and changing. We are not just talking about a couple of changing images here! We're talking anything on the page being able to change because the design of your site supports it. Though some of this type of implementation can be accomplished through client-side code (e.g. check out the Show Me page), it is most commonly implemented through a database.

A database is simply a storage facility for information. Your site can be developed so that the information is gathered up dynamically (while the page loads), formatted to look the way you want it to, and then drawn on the screen. Isn't that cool! For example, let's say you had about ten awards given to your company through the years from various sources so you decide that you would like to display these on your site. However, not too many people visit sites to see their awards so you opt to show them in a small area of your main screen. The real estate space that will be used is small and you can give a good professional image by doing it. So you send SitesDynamic the information for each award - the title, the content and maybe even a picture. We then add it to your database and design the site so that each time someone visits your site, a new award is displayed. Behind the scenes we are simply iterating through each award in the list, but to the user it is a never ending change on your page. Now, compare that to the static page where you have to go up on a consistent basis and manually change the title, content and picture each time you wanted the award to be updated. Not only would that be a difficult maintenance scenario, but it would be very error prone and frustrating to deal with. More importantly, though, you are now putting yourself in the position of driving the interval your customers will visit. I must reiterate - people will not return to a site that isn't different than the last time they were there. Does that make sense?

Another great source of dynamicness is the page content itself. The example you clicked on (http://www.watersedgechurch.org) is built using a site template and then all the content for each page is pulled from the database. Using SitesDynamic's exclusive website maintenance technology, the owner of this site has the ability to log in from anywhere and update any piece of information on their site without affecting the overall look of the site. An added advantage to this is the ability to change company contact information in one location and have it replicate through the entire site.

Another example of a database driven site is http://www.basketsetcetera.com. This site allows the owner the ability to add in only the necessary information for each new product in order to add that product to its online inventory. This is done in order to avoid having to manually add a new page or section to their site each time a new product.