Categorizing the elements of the modern web

In the world of the web, what is a web app and what is a website is now often blended. It’s not as simple as written content is a website, and an interactive tool is a web app. Blogs can be interactive, they can provide tools, live searching, etc.

This is a high level overview of what fits where, of which rules apply to what elements. It’s mainly for myself to help me develop tools.

Content vs its Vehicle

Content

• Navigation (Primary, Sidebar, etc)
• Markdown
• Images
• Video

Site or App itself

• CSS
• JavaScript
• Components
• Icons

Mutable vs Immutable

Mutable Entities

• Blog posts
• Page content
• Tag assignments
• Editable Markdown
• Editable components
• Sessions
• Git Repositories
• Figma documents
• Trello boards
• Google docs / spreadsheets

Immutable Values

• Images
• Text snippets
• Tags
• Timestamps
• Git Commits
• Git Trees

Derivable Values

• Resized and encoded images
• Minified CSS or JavaScript
• Rendered Markdown
• Published components’ code
• Rendered components
• Cryptographic hashes