A Blog is NOT A Website

When is a blog not a website? A blog is not a website, never has been, never will be.

Debate has been raging for quite sometime about blogs being used as websites and that there is nothing wrong with it. And as a website and blog designer I could not disagree more. Websites have a particular purpose in life while blogs have quite another purpose in life. It’s like saying which is better, the apple or the orange. They each have their pros and cons. So let’s take a look shall we.

Anatomy of a Website

• Provide a constant credible web presence
• Provide Up-to-Date information about a company, their products and services
• Need to be designed by someone who knows HTML
• Can be static, animated or interactive
• Informs followers of updates
• Has a place to leave comments
• Has a way to contact the owners

Anatomy of a Blog

• Provide a constant credible web presence
• Provide Up-to-Date information about a company, their products and services
• Little to no knowledge of HTML background or someone who knows HTML
• Interactive or animated
• Inform followers of updates
• Has a place to leave comments
• Has a way to contact owners

The Same But Different

OK, now that we have that out of the way.  Oh, confused?  Let’s expand shall we?

Each site can do the same as the other. The difference is how they get there and how the back end works. For example, I know plenty of bloggers out there and most (not all) did not setup or do not maintain the back end. They hired someone to come in design the site, put in the necessary plugins (based on the business) then turned the site over to the owner or blogger in question. Websites were are built by someone who knows HTML and other codes and scripts then turns the site over to the owner.

The difference is that an owner can easily add content whenever they so choose to a blog. Updating a site is a little bit different in that the owner has to send the changes to a webmaster to update the content. Which is not all that difficult if the web designer in question created a clean design and used a template (much like blogs now-a-days).

So websites are not necessarily static as content can be updated just as frequently or infrequently (and yes I have found plenty of blogs that have not been updated in over a year) as blogs. Oh, and websites can be just as interactive as blogs with animations, polls, graphics, etc.

Dave Taylor who wrote What’s the Difference Between a blog and a website, stated that you can’t inform your followers when a website is updated is incorrect. You can add a RSS feed to a website as you can a blog.  While I found that his comments were probably on the mark at the time he wrote this post, as you can see, his site now contains outdated information. This is the biggest thing people frown on about a website.

A blog is not better than a website any more that a website is better than a blog. They each have their own purposes. I do agree with Catherine Wolniewicz who wrote Websites vs. Blogs. Not only does she outline in succinct terms the differences of each, but also agrees with me that each have their own purposes and can be merged together. A website lends to more creditability since it is usually not easily updated by anyone and their brother. Blogs with the way they are popping up may or may not be credible. After all, anyone can create a blog (free or otherwise) in less than 5 minutes. They may be respectable and I’m not knocking them, but I have read plenty of blogs which tout one quick rich scheme after another or obviously didn’t do their homework on their subject.

For example lets compare these 3 sites.

1. CreativeAce.com is a website with a blog. I have had CreativeAce.com for over 10 years.  Up until the last 2 years it never had a blog, but I found that I wanted my opinion on certain writing issues and products to be heard. Well, I don’t want my main ideas, services and policies to be lost, so no sense in changing the web pages and uploading every time. The main pages need to be updated once a month or so, but not every time a thought pops into my head, so I created a blog and set it up where it can be accessed from the site and the site from the blog. Wala! A blog embedded in a website. I don’t lose the following I had and Google is happy because I’ve been in existence for more than 5 minutes and now all of a sudden my site via the blog is getting Googled and ranked better. Pages will have the same look and feel without necessarily being Identical (a problem with blogs (Hint: this is how you can tell a blog from a website) is that every page is laid out the same…exactly the same).
2. ComputerFinancingToday is a blog acting like a website. This site allows for some static content about the company and its policies which sell Dell computer products. This site is all about the products, but allows the owners to blog about the products and financing and credit repair service that they offer. Notice that all the pages are Identical, there is no allowing for creativity per page. Plugins and other configurations are still outsourced to me, so they are not completely independent of the designer component, but they have better things to do with their time.
3. HR Writers Guild is just a blog. They didn’t want anything fancy or complicated. The authors just wanted a place to post their writing progress and in some cases lack thereof, have a calendar of events, and a few affiliate links in there. With the exception of the store (this links to an Amazon storefront), every page is identical.

So as you can see they can be one and the same. If you just want an online diary, which is how blogging came about, then go for a blog. WordPress.com allows you to setup a free blog if you don’t want to make a living via blogging.

I found a really good Business Blogging post that explains in much more detail about using blogs to promote your business and what your blog should have. In fact, if you are starting a new business you should regularly visit GrowMap (or click on their RSS once you get there).

If you have a lot of information that won’t change much (businesses especially) go with a website and embed a blog on your site. The blog will not only get attention, but it benefit your website, especially if you’ve had your website for a long time. Think of this as an “oranapple”. The best of both worlds.

If you’re not technically inclined, hire someone like us who can setup or create web sites and/or blogs. NOTE: Not all web designers do WordPress setup and not all WordPress designers do web design. But there are a few of us out there that can see the world in array of colors versus black and white.

What’s your opinion on websites vs blogs?

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