You can use web pages to gather information from users, store that information in the server’s memory, and then use the information to create a dynamic response based on the user’s input. The most common tools for gathering user information are HTML forms and hypertext links.

HTML forms

Let you gather information from users and store it in the server’s memory. An HTML form can send the information either as form parameters or as URL parameters.

Hypertext links

Let you gather information from users and store it in the server’s memory. You specify a value (or values) to be submitted when a user clicks a link—a preference, for example—by appending the value to the URL specified in the anchor tag. When a user clicks the link, the browser sends the URL and the appended value to the server.