Poster Sites v. Dynamic Content on the Web
Faye pinged at me with a mail about doing a ‘web page’ for a new client. When I use to hear the words ‘web page’ referring to the action of building a web site, then I tell myself we’re on for a new round of web-ABC. So here we go:
Definitions of web-page on the Web:
A location on the World Wide Web, identified by a URL, which contains a block of data. A web page is stored on a server as a file written in HTML.
www.tamu.edu/ode/glossary.html
As you may notice, the web page is actually a file. Now let’s see what’s that a ‘web site’:
A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL, the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website
The website is in fact a collection of web pages and often times more than that. To be more precise: the website is a collection of files located on a server and accessible via a web browser from about any other computer.
Websites have since long passed the frontier of static HTML pages hyperlinked amongst them, slapped on with two or three graphic images, all in all looking like a poster on a wall, or like a billboard, flashing or not. Honestly, these so-called websites are prone to no success, no matter how funny or hot their content might be. Paper posters are useful whenever you want to address the neighborhood on some issue. Billboards go well in the vicinity of the Autobahn, or on fancy buildings. But none are destined for the internet.
No need to panic, people are familiar with static content, with information distributed on paper, with data carved in stone, with graffiti and signposts, with things that stay there and never change, unless one destroys -or replaces- the material support holding the message. From this perception, people genuinely fail to notice that Yahoo!, Google and CNN.com are using the very same technology of the internet like anyone’s ‘web page’ out there. So why on earth should one carve letters in stone by using internet transfer protocols instead of a hammer?
The idea is that when you think about joining the club of website owners, then you’ll have to think TV or CNN about distributing your message rather than sticking nice posters on trees or paying an ads agency to raise appealing billboards with your products. The internet is all about handling dynamic data, posts that go up as easy as writing an email to planet earth. Then you should also think of these posts’ lifespan as long enough to hold until you’ll post the next message, stacking it on top of the previous one. The internet is rather a river than a poodle.
Go here at moonkah.net to peek in at ways to buy yourself an ‘internet-boat’ and call it your website, not the ‘web-page’.
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