Roughly speaking, a server can serve either static or dynamic content. Remember that the term static means "served as-is". Static websites are the easiest to set up, so we suggest you make your first site a static site.

The term dynamic means that the server processes the content or even generates it on the fly from a database. This approach provides more flexibility, but the technical stack is more complex, making it dramatically more challenging to build a website.

It is impossible to suggest a single off-the-shelf application server that will be the right solution for every possible use case. Some application servers are designed to host and manage blogs, wikis, or e-commerce solutions, while others are more generic. If you're building a dynamic website, take the time to research your requirements and find the technology that best fits your needs.

Most website developers won't need to create an application server from scratch, because there are so many off-the-shelf solutions, many of which are highly configurable. But if you do need to create your own server, then you will probably want to use a server framework, leveraging its existing code and libraries, and extending just the parts that you need in order to meet your use case. Only a relatively small number of developers should need to develop a server completely from scratch: for example, in order to meet tight resource constraints on an embedded system. If you'd like to experiment with building a server, take a look through the resources in the Server-side website programming learning pathway.