Here at Kits Media, we’re often asked by new clients if they should have a blog or a website. We build both websites and blogs for our clients, and often do combinations of them. We’d like to pass on a few of our thoughts to consider. (Please note the pictures are just for decoration. We liked the idea that blog building could come in a box.)
The upside of blogs
∙ A blog can be designed to look like a website. A blog really is a website. At first glance only things like comments, dates or certain aspects of layout might show that it’s a blog.
∙ A blog can have its own url (web address). You can’t tell a blog from a website just by its address, unless it’s hosted on a site like Blogger or WordPress.
∙ A blog can be set up with pages as well as posts. Pages and posts can be tidied up with tables and galleries.
∙ Blogs can have menus. Many people just keep adding one post after another. By using pages and/or categories instead of posts, you can create traditional menus, includig drop-down menus.
∙ There are an endless number of widgets and plugins for blogs – everything from event calendars to Flash galleries. Most of them are free. These little pieces of wizardry have all the programming ready-made, so you’re not paying a website developer to create site versions of them. (You might however want to get a developer to install them or customize them.)
∙ Unlike websites, communication flow in blogs is two-way if you set your pages or posts to to allow comments.
∙ People can make comments on your posts and they appear right on the page. Websites do not generally solicit personal opinions about their services or products, and if they do, they are normally hidden from other visitors.
∙ Blogs have a built-in function called “pinging” that notifies search engines when there is new content on your site.
∙ When you get tired of the look of your blog, you can download and install a new theme for a fresh look. Most of your content will move right into place in the new layout.
And the downside of blogs. . .
∙ You can get a free blog hosted on WordPress or Blogger, but, to protect their servers, you will be limited in your ability to add widgets and plugins.
∙ You can get your own hosting account at an independent company, but not all hosts make it easy to install blogs. Many hosts do not back up files, and there will be no other copy of your files if they’re hacked. See our notes on recommended servers for WordPress.
∙ Posts in a blog appear in reverse chronological order – the latest ones first. Your latest post will be at the top, although you can change the dates to show an earlier one at the top.
∙ You must learn how to make pages and posts yourself. You must learn how to size and optimize images and videos and audio files; how to create galleries; how to link to other sites; how to add tags, and so on. You need to be a writer, an information designer, a programmer, an editor and a marketing expert. And it’s amazing how often you need to use html to fix or add something.
∙ You will need to learn how to download and install widgets and plugins, or have a developer do it. This often entails getting into the phP coding and other stuff you really don’t want to mess with.
∙ If you’re not comfortable downloading software and editing html and possibly style sheets, you probably won’t get the most out of your blog.
∙ You have to really like writing posts and find them easy to do and to keep doing them.
∙ You need to be committed to monitoring comments and keeping your blog updated.
∙ You need to be able to keep your blog organized so people can locate content easily. This means moving things around and re-categorizing content every now and then.
∙ Because blog entries are automatically dated, the dates on the pages will show visitors when information hasn’t been added for a while. Eventually some pages on your blog will have dates from months or even years ago which make them look dated.
∙ To get your blog established, you need to know how to add head tags and verification codes for search engines, and submit the blog to directories. It’s possible for a developer to add them later, but since search engine optimization permeates every aspect of a website, you may not have the best architecture, page titles and alt tags if you built the blog yourself.
∙ Blogs should be integrated with RSS feeds and Twitter and other promotional tools to keep your content active and widely available.
∙ You will need to monitor your comments and learn to tell what appear to be “perfectly safe” spam comments apart from genuine comments. When visitors are anonymous, this can be tricky.
∙ You will spend a lot of your time on the web looking for information. On the other hand, a good website developer is a visual designer, an information organizer, a programmer, a usability expert, an editor, a marketer and promotional advisor all in one.
Websites and blogs can easily be combined. We often recommend building a traditional website, installing a blog, and linking the blog from the website’s main menu. This way, you can have good static pages providing information about yourself, your company or services and products, and a blog where you can post your related thoughts about your business.
Or, we can use WordPress for the entire site, put your content that changes less often on Pages, and create a blog section where you can post news.
