static: HTML, CSS, images, JS, all served from the server's filesystem to the site visitor over the network. no server-side code execution to generate the page

static: HTML, CSS, images, JS, all served from the server's filesystem to the site visitor over the network. no server-side code execution to generate the page content. dynamic: non-HTML server-side code (PHP, Perl, Ruby etc.) is evaluated/executed to generate site content which is then sent over the network to the site visitor. this may involve hitting databases to get content for the requested page, or even make network queries for integrations with other services (social media feeds, payment processor sessions, etc.). the server then returns the generated HTML to the visitor. I just realized these two Wikipedia articles summarize the two different approaches quite well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_web_page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_web_page