Web Development Key Components
Domain Name - Unique identifier to your website on the internet. With this you can be sure that anyone that knows it can find you online
Web Design - Covers the actual putting together of files that make up your website from written content to audio and video files
Web Hosting - Without this your website will be floating in thin air. You can run your own server or subscribe to a web hosting company.
Uses
Personal - Usually in form of a blog or a daily diary where personal opinions or positions on issues are put down. Events like birthdays, weddings and articles are good reasons to own a personal website.
Business - Probably the most common in use in the world today, businesses are realizing the cost effectiveness of publishing their products and services on the web while enabling uncountable number of potential clients to find them.
E-commerce - Often refered to as e-business this is where actual transactions take place on the web. Visitors browse and choose what to buy and while still on the website are able to pay for such goods using any online payment solution.
Strategies
Outsource - All the key components of any web development can be outsourced. Since there are companies that focus on this, you may be better off trusting the expertise of professionals.
DIY (Do It Yourself) - Domain name registration and Web design can actually be done by anyone with means of paying online and a little bit of time since web authoring tools like Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver come with detailed User Guides. For web hosting, better outsource.
Types of websites
Static - Means just that, static, like a sign post, content is usually FTP'ed to the web hosting server after building or editing. The load on the server is very mininal.
Dynamic - Some wrongly see websites with a little animation as dynamic and this is wrong. Dynamic websites are usually based on some programming languages (and in some cases a database) and the content seen is usually determined by the visitor and not the publisher at any particular point in time (unless you have static content that is always there regardless of what the visitor does).