Question

I’ve not really been able to differentiate between the patterns mentioned in the title.

A dynamic website has a user interface developed with basically HTML, CSS and maybe javascript (at least, that’s what the user sees). The backend could be PHP or ASP (or whatever) which would be connected to a database.

I believe the database is the Model and the UI is the View. Is the backend a controller, presenter or viewmodel?

I’ll appreciate an explanatory answer and, if necessary, links.

Answer 1

You cannot determinate which design pattern has been used for the application without access to the source code. And I get ad definite impressions, that this is what you are asking for.

Also you seem to be somewhat confused about what the are the parts of MVC and MVC-inspired design patterns:

• Model is not the database. It is a layer (not a class or object) of application, that contains all of the domain business logic and interacts with at least one data source (which might or might not be a database).
• The UI is maintained by presentation layer, which is mostly composed (mostly) from views and controller-like structures.