What is a Blog and how is it different than a website?

Blogs are a type of website, everything on the internet is a website in one form or another. Static websites are built using programs like Dreamweaver on your local computer and then uploaded to your hosting sites server. Blogs on the other hand are built on server side applications where non-experts can manage their own websites on line.

With programs like Dreamweaver you need to know how to use programming code like HTML (hypertext markup language) or CSS (cascading style sheets). If you want more website definitions and terms please read my article “Website Terms”.  No so with a blog. Using anyone of the blogging platforms all you have to do is enter your content into the online editor, upload and image or two, even create a gallery of images and publish.

Here’s a little known secret; you can also use some blogs as a CMS (Content Management System); basically a static website without a blog. A content management system is a collection of tools and scripts designed to allow the creation, modification, organization and removal of information from a website.

Let’s face it not everyone wants to blog. I know this sounds counter intuitive but you don’t have to be a blogger to use a blog for a website. But later if you do decide you want to blog you will be all set up to do so.

Note that this site is built using WordPress.org. I use WordPress when building artist sites with or without a blog.  

The navigation at the top of this page is for all the static pages of the site and the sidebar to the left is the navigation of all the blog categories and content.

Blogs are:

  1. A TYPE of website
  2. Built in chronological order typically with the newest content at the top of the page
  3. Is a type of CMS (content management system). Using a CMS the user is not required to have any HTML or coding knowledge to get started
  4. Blogs get indexed quickly by search engines because of the dynamic content.
  5. Optimizing your site for the search engines is far easier with a blog.
  6. It is much cheaper to set up a blog and maintain the site than it is for a HTML website as you don’t need to know code or hire a web designer.
  7. Bloggers are building relationships with their readers

Blogs and websites (static pages) go hand in hand

  1. On the blog you can expand and comment on the content of your static pages
  2. This leaves your static pages such as your portfolio images clean and uncluttered
  3. Some blogs can have static pages

In Conclusion
All too often when an artist decides to build a website they will either hire a designer or they know a friend or relative that can do it for them.  The site is great for the first year or two but then it needs updating. So rather than wait for your friend to find the time or go out and get quotes from a new designer because yours has moved on why not just do it yourself.

There are 2 types of blogs: free and self hosted and I will compare them in the next post.

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