Thread: Stupid Question

Is there a difference between a blog and a "website?"

I know...roll your eyes - I won't take it personally.

I want to start a site that is basically "all things me." What I mean by that is to have a central homepage with pages about various chapters of what I am doing. It isn't anything extravagant, in fact I am planning on using Google pages but with purchasing my own domain name.

I have a pretty clear thought of what I want it to look like and how I want it laid out. I am stuck, however, in not understanding enough the difference between signing up with something like Blogger or another blogging site or just registering the site with Google Pages and going from there.

Merkin,

The main question I would be asking is.... will you want / need to change the data on your site often? Add to it? (Blog may be better) Or, once you have the content up, it will be "static" - rarely changing... ? (google page may be better)

Long before blogs and Myspace and Facebook were all invented, I had a web page that was basically 'Hakrjak's World'... It was just a static page on the web where I posted my pictures, wrote lengthy stories (Blogs...), and had my email contact info for people to get in touch with me. It was sligthly more difficult than using the services that are now available for blogging, because I had to import everything into an HTML editor and push the code out to the web hosting provider, but beyond that -- not a whole ton of difference.

But to answer your question specificaly, a blog is an online web journal that automagically date & timestamps your entries, and puts them out there for the world to see in HTML, which is easy to edit & change on the fly, etc... Some services allow different blogs to link to each other so that you can subscribe to friends blogs and suggest them, etc... I believe the disadvantage of not using a service like this would be that it would be harder to take advantage of these features. Then again -- the advantage of going it on your own would be that you could filter out all of the advterisements that the services slap on your page, and maybe use your own.

- Hakrjak

Originally Posted by AroundTheWorld

The main question I would be asking is.... will you want / need to change the data on your site often? Add to it? (Blog may be better) Or, once you have the content up, it will be "static" - rarely changing... ? (google page may be better)

A little bit of both, I guess. But I also want to have areas that remain static. What I envisioned was my homepage being www.mysite.com and then the blog area being www.mysite.com/titleofmyblog. I want the homepage to remain relatively unchanged, like a front door to my site. And then page links that go to the individual areas.

Static home (html/css) and a blog/blogs in a subfolder seems to be in order. Really just personal preference though, there are so many options.

Swipe the css from your blog templates for a website uniform.

As Jon said though, throw down a couple bucks for a domain.

So either way, a blog is a website. And on a blog I can add pages, right?

Maybe I just don't read enough blogs to tell the difference. The one thing that stands out in my mind when I think about blogs is that they seems to scroll down the page forever. I was thinking that there were extreme differences between the two.

The more I think about what I am aiming for maybe a blog is all I need. I'll have to think about it - but with a decision made soon. I think I may be trying to merge a personal journey blog with an idea I have had shelved for a little while now.

WordPress Direct offers a blog/website.

They have 1000's of templates to choose from. The pages are already set up for SEO if you need/want that. You have the option to "stick" posts. Each post you make is it's own page on most templates. You may stick as many pages as you want and they stick in the order you stick them. It does scroll the pages but it also lists them in a menu on the side and you can categorize your articles. This tool is VERY user friendly and once you run through it just once, you can literally set up a website in less than an hour. Maintenance of the site/blog is simple.

The cost is less than $100.00 and can be upgraded if you decide to add numerous sites. It does NOT include hosting (another monthly cost). However, if you build multiple sites, you can typically host with the same host and simply add subdomains. (The tricky part there is tracking which sites are hosted where if you also have multiple hosts- that is possibly another thread).

Our site's blog uses WordPressDirect if you would like to see an example.

Hope this helps.

speakin of blogs being defined as an "online journal"

whatever happened to xanga?

maybe I just got too old for it, but do any of those old journal sites like livejournal and xanga still get traffic now that most ppl just get their own URL for their blogs?