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The challenges in designing and maintaining an online publication can be daunting. After the initial leap from print media to an interactive website, the tasks of increasing site traffic, leveraging archival content, and creating a rewarding experience for web readers -- one that's stylistically fresh and on the cutting edge technologically -- present new concerns and opportunities for publishers. Many of these challenges are resolved by implementing a dynamic site structure and by using template and database-driven archival software. Dispatch is such a program. This section of documentation demonstrates the differences between "static" and "dynamic" sites, and what this means to your online publication and readers.
In a single issue of an average online publication, pages are usually strung together by a sectional table of contents and/or a home page (as in this example). The empty boxes represent articles within a specific issue.
The enlarged page on the right of the diagram displays all of the possible reader paths from any given page on this site. As you will see, this particular structure is extremely limited and usually results in low overall site traffic.
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static (sta-tik) adj. 1. showing little change 2. at rest, inactive
We refer to the paths a reader can take throughout a site as "reader paths." A typical reader path might be similar to the this diagram: The reader enters through the home page and jumps from one article to the next within a given issue.
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