Blogs versus Websites: What’s the Difference?
A blog isn’t just a two-column private journal anymore. People are noticing. They ask questions like:
- Just what can be done with a blog?
- What’s a blog, a website and a combo site?
- Can I have a static home page and a back-end blog?
You can do just about anything you want using WordPress. Blogs aren’t really blogs anymore – they’ve become full-blown content management systems, replacing early or traditional HTML sites.
In fact, the world hasn’t really figured out yet just how much blogs can do and all the various ways we can use them. The world is still learning. Blog technology is still new.
We’re the early adopters, the people shaping how blogs are used for generations to come.
Website versus Blog: The Difference
There’s a misconception surrounding blogs and websites. Many people still believe these two types of Internet presence are different. Well, they are different, but only in how you use them and not how you build them.
Three years ago, we built traditional websites in HTML. HTML was nice, but the sites just sat there, doing… well, nothing, really. Now, we use WordPress for every project, from traditional two-column blogs to static sites to combo sites offering both static potential and back-end blogging, because we want sites to do more for people, not just sit there looking pretty.
Building a blog uses much of the same HTML code as building a traditional static website. Toss in some PhP that gives dynamic features and functionality, and the sky’s the limit. Of course, WordPress sites can be fully static with no blogging happening at all. Strip away the visible blog posting features and you have a very pretty site – but with all the power in your hands.
Take Back the Power
In the past, people who owned traditional static sites often had to call up their web designer or techie for the most minor of changes, like changing a phone number, adding a product or rewording a sentence.
These people had to ask someone each and every time they wanted a change. They had to pay that person for his or her time as well. They couldn’t make changes themselves – well, not unless they had site access, coding knowledge, certain skills, and some software.
WordPress empowers people, giving them full control to make changes. It puts the keys in the hands of users.
With WordPress, anyone can move elements around, switch out features, add cool tools, change theme designs and manipulate content all on their own with no special knowledge, no fancy software and no out-of-pocket expense.
Just log in, make the changes, and voila. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Your turn: What questions do you have about WordPress? Are there any areas you’re unsure about? Curious whether a blog can do this or that? Just ask. We’re here to give you the answers you need.
…and if you’re stuck with a static site, tired of asking for help and fed up of paying people do to simple things, we can help.
We’ll build you a new home, help you move and hand you all the keys to your castle so you can take back your power. Get in touch with us today.
31 Responses to “Blogs versus Websites: What’s the Difference?”
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The one trouble I have with WordPress is that it’s not entirely straightforward how to make a website that’s more than just a blog. For example, I like to have my main freelance business site be a static page that tells people who I am. In fact, I keep my blog separate from this altogether because I wouldn’t want my ramblings about food and hangovers to cloud my professionalism as a freelance writer. I know WordPress has “pages” and things like that, and indeed it’s very powerful if you know your way around themes and CSS, but for me it’s just a little bloated for my business site.
I DO use WordPress for my blogs, though, and for that I love it!
monicas last blog post..Writing Samples Demystified
I love my Men With Pens site. All of the things you so passionately stated here have made me a happy camper. I love being able to make changes on the fly, add and subtract elements. I can immediately respond to market changes with new content. I can improve, and enhance at will. I still have my static site too which serves a purpose but nothing beats WordPress if you want to have true control over your site. No pesky CSS, or MySQL database to learn and potentially screw up. When asked by new clients, my suggestion is always WordPress – Pen Men.
Great article, and good point about blogging platforms morphing into full-blown content management systems.
Another CMS your readers may want to consider is Drupal (www.drupal.org). We created a corporate blog a couple of years ago using it, and next year we’re going to port the entire corporate website over to it.
I’ve been creating websites for over 10 years now, and as much as I actually enjoy the coding aspect of it I would never create a website from scratch anymore. It just isn’t a constructive use of your time, and it is not at all necessary. Systems like WordPress, Drupal and others do all of the heavy lifting for you, so that you can focus on that which is really important – content.
James,
You are so on the money today, it’s frightening. I couldn’t be happier with the theme you guys did for me – and as you say, the power is in the owner’s hands. I even have a local WAMP server on one of my machines running the bare theme – so I can muck around with it and break it – see how to add in things and so forth.
Beautiful.
(And as Karen Swim said, I send people to you guys…)
Brett Legrees last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
@Monica: I’m not a professional developer, but I do believe there’s a few ways of using WordPress how you ask.
For those with more money than expertise, simply use two domain names. Install a more static wordpress theme on the first, a more bloggy theme on the second, and then have the first link to the second.
The second way is much more technical, but uses less server resources, and ~I think~ involves setting up coding that will switch stylesheets according to the page being viewed. However, I have absolutely no idea of how to do this, or even how possible it is.
But like I said I’m no pro web developer.
Hi,
I set up a wordpress blog for a not for profit volunteer group, and wanted to make it password protected (to comply with the guidelines for websites from the national organization) but had trouble adding people.
I’ve done this before, created password protected blogs, but this time, with a larger group, people kept saying, I can’t get in, I can’t get in. (So I gave up, took off the password protection and changed the content to comply with the guidelines.)
It’s not an urgent need, but it’s a minor annoyance that I wasn’t able to set it up with the password protection for a group.
I have to admit I’m just learning about blogs. My expertise has been in writing traditional websites.
Your article was very helpful. I have a couple questions that perhaps you or some of your posters can answer:
1) With regard to SEO, how do blogs do? Which will rank better, a traditional site or a blog, all things being equal?
2) Can a blog site look like a traditional website in terms of the typical menu items (i.e. Home, About Us, FAQs, Contact, etc.)?
3) I’m planning to sell an e-book shortly. Which would be the best choice for maximum exposure: a) Blog, b) Traditional website, c) Long sales page?
Thanks for any suggestions or resources you can provide.
Susan
WP has been a blessing for me. Now a technologically-challenged person like myself can set up sites (with or without blog) and make updates. Think about the money I’m saving for this DIY! And then, when my business is ready, I can hire someone to make it look more personal.
Oh, that is one big issue with WP. The appearance is limited to available themes. Sure, we can use personal photo or image for the header, change the colors, etc., but still, Revolution Mag looks like Revolution Mag.
Someone can make big $ if they can develop very functional yet personalizable WP theme, I think.
Akemi “spiritual entrepreneur” @ Yes to Mes last blog post..Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship, Part 5, Build Your System
I’ve just recently been considering adding a “static” site to serve as my writer’s portfolio page. I like WordPress because I’m most familiar with it.
When I look at WordPress themes though, they obviously come from a blogging perspective, even the ones that are geared more towards portfolio type content.
Is there a way to tweak the themes in general so that they appear to be more static and not blog-esque? Or should I just consider having an html site?
Thank you MWP, for another brain tickling post.
Cheers!
George
Tumblemooses last blog post..Do you SEO?
These are great questions, everyone!
@ Monica – It’s actually very easy to convert a blog into a website, especially if you have a template that looks more like a website than a blog. Even if it doesn’t, you can move the layout around, etc. Turn off commenting and pings, remove the comment features from the theme code so that the comment sections don’t appear, and voila.
For a good example of a website style of blog, check out http://www.escapingreality.ca It’s not our best work (especially since I just broke the sidebar), but there’s no blogging going on there.
@ Harry – Um, I… uh… broke the sidebar at ER. Sorry. *hangs head in shame*
@ Brett/Karen – YAY! You guys are great, thanks!
@ Pat – That’s about the long and short of it, yup.
@ Elaine – Hm, that’s a question for Harry or Charlie. We’ll see if we can gather an answer for you today.
@ Susan – All things being equal, neither will rank better. That’s like asking if a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of brick.
Answer 1. – All things therefore not being equal, blogs tend to rank faster and have more flexibility regarding SEO (when the SEO is used properly).
Answer 2. – Absolutely. There are some websites out there built on WordPress and you’d never be able to tell.
Answer 3 – None. Your potential to drive traffic, stir up interest and market your ebook is going to be the biggest factor. (At least, in my opinion!)
Good post, although I’m wondering if there are two different ideas at work here:
a) blog software (wordpress, typepad) vs. website software (?? dreamweaver, cold fusion, ??)
b) blog websites (reverse chronological display, comments) vs. static websites (one way information sharing, stuff stays exactly where you put it.)
You can make both blog websites and static websites with blog software like wordpress.
James and Harry helped me out with my community association site this summer and we make heavy use of wordpress ‘pages’ which are essentially static web pages. We married them up with regular blog-style posts for news and updates. It works well — I just worry about creating good articles and the site just plain works.
For me, WordPress is a nice balance between capability and usability. Men with Pens is an excellent balance between technical smarts and smart design. Put them both together with your great idea and POW — amazing things happen.
@Tumblemoose:
There sure is.
For an example of this… compare the original base of my theme on the demo site:
http://deeporder.ithemes.com/
now look at how it look after I whacked it with a spanner for a while:
http://www.pandelaw.com/
Here I went the other way… turned a more static site into a blog.
Now, I could easily turn this site into more having a static homepage. The homepage sidebar on my site is actually stored in a separate file called ‘home_sidebar.php’, so I could easily take that out to have the homepage completely static if I wanted. I just leave it in because it provides important navigation for the site purpose.
And @ Akemi (yeah yeah i know double post), check out the customization of my theme I highlighted above.
With a little effort you can significantly change how the theme looks or functions. I’ve even done away with category pages altogether and use redirects to link the category widget with customized archives pages.
Of course, it results in a changelog that approaches 40 pages, but if you put the effort in, you can do just about anything with a theme.
*sits back and relaxes*
You know, I’m really, really beginning to like Patrick… Mmhm.
Haha… I ~really~ need to stop tweaking my site and actually get back to, you know… writing content. That’s the danger in doing all this… you become so engrossed in how WordPress works and learning the ins and outs you forget to actually write!
I did want to provide a better reply to Tumblemoose though so it does not come off as simply boasting about what I’ve done.
The way my site seems to provide the static front page is by using two files, index.php and home.php file.
The index php gives php instructions to get home.php, and the home.php includes all the content for the home page. This home.php can include anything really.
I won’t paste code cause the code I use is copyrighted, but any competent developer like say… MWP should be able to implement something similar.
@ Akemi – Actually, that’s not quite accurate. Any coder or developer can rip full themes apart and make them look nothing like they used to. Some of the people who have used Rev Mag have reworked them until they’re absolutely unrecognizeable from the original theme.
Hi James – Thanks for this – I get sick and tired of people talking about blogs as though they’re not websites.
I love the flexibility of my Revolution blog, designed by Men With Pens. I used to have a website behind it. But now, I’m starting to add pages on WordPress. It’s brilliant, I can add whatever I want, so it’s more like a website, as the pages don’t show up as blogposts.
Now I do have one question. I host my blog on http://www.cathlawson.com/blog but I’d like to move it over so the front page is at http://www.cathlawson.com
That sounds straightforward enough and I know how to do it. But will the url for the blog pages stay the same if I move it to the root folder, or will the url change for them all? For example, now they’re set out like this: http://cathlawson.com/blog/2008/09/04/7-tips-for-covering-your-ass-in-business/
I don’t want to move it and find that I’ve made a hash of things. But I’d really like to get rid of the sucky XSitePro Stuff I have on the other pages.
@Cath: Your best bet would be to install the whole blog in the root directory of cathlawson.com. If you just move parts of it or try to move the files themselves, all of the internal directory paths will be messed up and won’t know where to look for information.
You could do a new WP installation in your root directory, then install the theme in the new place and export/import your pages and posts.
Hopefully I just pick up these subtle cues somehow without being aware of them. How else would you explain how you seem to be in my head so often? (If that’s not it, I don’t want to know.)
Know what I spent hours doing this weekend? Downloading the most recent version of WordPress and playing with it to see how well it would work for me as a CMS rather than an actual blogging system. Now, Monday morning rolls around, and here you are. Seriously… you’re freaking me out a little bit.
I’ve always considered a blog to be just another form of a website. I guess maybe because I’ve always tried to view things the way customers would. There really is no difference between a blog and a “website”; they’re one in the same, it just depends on what you want to do with it
@ Elaine Luther – the easiest way to password protect any directory is through your web hosting. There should be a “Password Protect Areas” icon or button in you control panel. You can then assign any directory to be password protected.
So for example then, you could allow people access to your home page and other pages while a “members” directory is password protected. There are other more complicated ways to do this, but using the web hosting password protection option is the easiest in my book.
@ Susan – James it totally right (as usual). SEO-wise it depends on your SEO efforts as to how successful you will be. However, one advantage blogs (WordPress) has is people tend to update their blogs more frequently than static sites. Google LOVES websites that continually change and get updated.
For you number 2 question: Again like James said, yep. Our site has two areas: static business pages and blog. The static page’s horizontal menu is exactly the same as our blog’s, however, the sidebar is different.
John Hoff – eVentureBizs last blog post..How Can A Blog Help Your Business?
How do you buy a domain through WordPress?
Nicole LaMarcos last blog post..Two New Children’s Books Help Kids Deal With Fear
@ Nicole – You don’t. You buy domain names through web hosts and domain name registrars.
Hey James,
I agree that a blog is just a website, but I think that blogging has really pushed the technology.
About 10 years ago, I started working with CMS systems (they were simply called “dynamic websites” back then). The idea was simple: store all of the information in a database, and then set up an easy way for people to change that information. So rather than use a big HTML editor like Dreamweaver to fix “misspeled”, the average office worker could log onto the website and change it using an online Word-like word processor.
It took a while for the technology to come along for various reasons. But like the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Once blogging started to take off and people wanted to publish themselves online, there was a greater, more immediate need for a self-contained, almost-dummy-proof way of creating that publisher.
Now with WordPress and other similar systems, you can plug in lots of cool stuff like automatic backups and basic email campaign software and whatever else. Quite amazing to see the arc.
Me personally — I prefer to blend the two. Right now I am still redesigning my main website, but essentially what I’ve done is create a design for my “main” website, and then altered the WordPress default theme (changing graphics, adjusting the CSS, etc.) so that it (almost) seamlessly matches my website.
But I can see the allure to a full WordPress website — it really is an easy-to-use CMS. There are some problems with scalability once you get into the bigger websites, but for the average small business owner I think that the usability and freedom of controlling your own content is the biggest plus.
And for web designers — well it really does open some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it…?!
~Graham
Good article and WordPress truly is very flexible but it’s not the only CMS out there. Most WordPress plug-ins are aimed at blogging, so depending on the site you want to make, there may be a better suited CMS with plug-ins that will get your site working the way you want quicker than WordPress will. Either way, we are moving away from the static sites of yesterday, so the more education about this sort of thing, the better!
Dot Com Duds last blog post..How I Promoted My First Blog Contest
Someone asked me this question the other day and I tried to explain the benefits of blogging. As usual, you have said it even better, so I’ll be emailing this post to a bunch of people.
Sharon Hurley Halls last blog post..Writing Talk – Rates Rant
Hello James,
What a great post! In my humble opinion, most templates for blogs are free, easy to set up, and require less maintenance than a professionally designed website.
I’ve noticed that a lot of bloggers tend to treat their blogs merely as online journals instead of utilizing their blogs as a global marketing tool to promote their goods and services.
For emerging writers, a well written blog, “content management system,” containing provocative content is an extremely effective, cost efficient way to market books internationally.
Yes, I’m a first-time visitor. Thank you for sharing.
Manchild
OK so I would like to find out your thoughts on ” wordpress themes and the destruction it has on the design industry”. . . we are having quite a debate in the office and I would like to hear from you guys , as your ophinions are well valued
@ Dee – I’d be happy to give you my thoughts… but I’m a little confused. WordPress destructs the design industry? Explain further what the two sides of the debate are, could you? Right now, I’m seeing something as clear as “celery will cause the apocalypse” and not getting it. (Of course, I’m sick with a cold, so that’s not helping…)
@James – Years ago I used to be in the construction business, and I remember this old plumber ranting:
‘I remember back in my day you used to have to know something in order to be a plumber. These days any joker with a hack saw, some PVC pipe and some glue can claim they’re a plumber…’
I’ve heard web designers with similar laments about modern CMS packages and how easy they make it for the average Joe to create a site.
@Dee
Don’t give up hope. I couldn’t add a comment here using Firefox, one of my plugins probably clashing with the new design. I had to [gasp] open up IE to post this comment. All is not lost, but web designers are going to need to be flexible. Might be time to venture into template design…