A static website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the same form as the user will view them. They are edited using three broad categories of software:
Text editors. such as Notepad or TextEdit, where the HTML is manipulated directly within the editor program

• WYSIWYG editors. such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver, where the site is edited using a GUI interface and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor software
• Template-based editors, such as Rapidweaver and iWeb, which allow users to quickly create and upload websites to a web server without having to know anything about HTML, as they just pick a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and text to it in a DTP-like fashion without ever having to see any HTML code.

A dynamic website is one that has frequently changing information. Constantly changing or adding pages to a web site is very difficult and expensive, if you are creating pre-built pages and putting on some remote server.  Dynamic web sites are designed differently. Ideally, they seperate the structure and appearance from the content.  Both elements are created separately and then stored in a database.  The web page is then created upon request.

Another feature of these kinds of web sites is that the web site can be constantly under construction while it is being accessed by web users.  When a new version of a page is saved it is immediately available to the next web user who might access the page. Being a database that delivers web pages you can then have multiple editors and writers adding content to the site.  Generally this is how the large USA Today and other newspaper sites work.  The process does away with the bottleneck caused by one person editing a static web site.  Now you can have an entire staff involved, and they do not have to know any HTML.