Website or Blog .. Website or Blog??

[Thrive Promotional]

Shud you have both a website and a blog ? Does it depend ?

Would like to start exploring an idea (independent of current promo product business) and not really familiar with blogs .. yet.

So far, I have a domain name registered ... the content will be mainly a directory style setup .. so revenue generated via banner ads, directory listings etc.

Would like to get this going on on a small scale first .. with room within the blog or website to expand the design/options if the idea takes off.

Any general thoughts appreciated, from web designers/blog savvy flying solo members?

[FletcherTax]

May I suggest getting in touch with Ali of Bcosuluvit (hope that's the right spelling!) (also on this Forum). He can tell you all about websites and blogging in particular.

Personally, I think a website is a 24/7/365 shopfront whereas a blog is frequent updated content relevant to your market. I would (and am) do both.

Janna

[bushsong]

I would suggest that you are far better off with a website that incorporates a blog. Mind you, I don't call them that on sites as not all visitors are familiar with the term "blog". Instead, I prefer to have a menu item called News.

The advantage of incorporating your blog into your website is that it provides an opportunity to be constantly adding content to your site. You've probably heard the expression that "Content Is King", but even better is that "Unique Content Is King". The regular addition of content demonstrates to the search engines that you have an active site. Much traffic is generated from long tail keywords and phrases that you will naturally include in blog posts when you are writing about your business.

The purpose of a blog in a distinct form from your main website is to simply drive traffic to your business site. Why make people visit another site when you can have the content already on your main business site?

In my experience, the best way of doing this is to use Joomla for your main website which incorporates a blog as part of the software. The blog can be enhanced with the extension "Superblogger" which will cost you the enormous sum of $7.00!

Cheers,

[Thrive Promotional]

Thanks appreciate the feedback ....

[Ali Dark]

Hallo Thrive.

Generally having a blog is a very good idea.

Bushsong's advice is good - I use Wordpress instead of Joomla though. Calling the blog 'news' is a cool idea for the reason he said. Blogs are catching on though!

It's not hard to integrate a blog into your website if you start out with software designed to blog such as Wordpress. That way your options are always open.

Even if you didn't leave this option open, it wouldn't be hard to set up a blog separate from your site in a subdirectory. Do keep your blog at the same domain though - to reap full benefits of your blog.

I do know that it's easy to build on /change what you've done working with Wordpress and it may well be the same with Joomla. Both systems are very extensible with plugins and great a online community for support.

Joomla would be the choice for a directory as you might be able to find a specific module/plugin to do that. There are other web people around FS who should be able to point you in the right direction (I stick to more straightforward sites/blogs).

If you wanted to contact me about this, to see if it's possible with Wordpress, feel free - check out my site via the link below. I do work on a small scale which can be expanded as needed.

You should sign up for the newsletter there because I'm about to release a free ebook about setting up a "website and blog in one" with wordpress.

Good luck!

[Raky]

I definitely agree with having both a website and a blog.

We recently released our Blog to inform the public of new products, promotions and the tech jazz so that developers can also benefit from it.

I love the idea of a Blog as it often gives a personal and obviously dynamic feel to what usually is a static site.

[wordmistress]

Originally Posted by Ali Starbright

You should sign up for the newsletter there because I'm about to release a free ebook about setting up a "website and blog in one" with wordpress.

That sounds very interesting to me, will do it now.

Someone asked me today to explain the difference between a website and a blog so I wrote this piece on my blog in response. It addresses the attitude side of the discussion more than the technical side.

[Ken Wood]

Originally Posted by Ali Starbright

Bushsong's advice is good - I use Wordpress instead of Joomla though.

We use Joomla and Wordpress together - Joomla for the main website, with a Wordpress blog embedded in it. I think that's the ideal approach, it uses each software product for the thing it's been built and optimised for.

[John Debrincat]

The decision to have a website or a blog are bth motivated by the same ideas. To get found on the WWW.

But a blog is a live thing and needs to be constantly updated. if you want to get your feet wet without making an investment then go sign up at www.blogger.com which is free. If you don't have the content for a blog or the time to commit to updating daily then don't do it.

You might consider starting a Facebook business page and also a Twitter page. These can be linked so that the content only needs to be updated on one. These should also be linked to your website using a Facebook fans box and Twitter follow me.

Websites really have the same issue "CONTENT IS KING" unless there is valuable and rich content then your wasting your time. there are a lot of directory sites out there and frankly most are a waste of space. So tread carefully as directories are also often penalised by the search engines if they are seen as creating duplicate content.

Hope this helps

John

[Daniel82]

I combined a website and blog on my site. It gives people a reason to keep checking back to my site when they otherwise wouldn't.

Plus it's a good opportunity to show my human side through writing. Otherwise it's just another graphic designer's website. Boring.

Site has only been up 2 days an I have received dozens of great feedback already. So the chances of them hiring me to do design work is definitely increased.