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Website vs Blog: What’s the difference?
What is the single most important difference between “conventional” or “static” websites and blogs? Many people will probably reply
- Blogs are dynamic, websites are not
- Blogs encourage conversation, websites do not
- Blogs offer RSS, websites do not
- Blogs publish current news, websites do not
- Blogs create the blogosphere while websites are in a way standalone islands
Now you already might suspect where I’m at: All of the differences, with the exception of #5 maybe are not true (anymore)!
- You have all kinds of websites which are enhanced in a way that they are not static but dynamic in their nature and I do not speak about static HTML vs PHP
- Also you do not need a blog to lead a conversation. Asides from forums, wikis and all kinds of Web 2.0 sites any site can add a comment form or a connection to a forum which will enable users to engage in a conversation and also engage you, the publisher, in one.
- There also plenty of services which will create an RSS feed for any website etc. based sites.
News sites like CNN or BBC are of course not blogs but they publish news and naturally the two are not the only ones. Everybody can create a non-blog website that deals with the latest news, buzz or products.
While there is no extra sphere for websites, the so called blogosphere is not as tangible either I would argue. Nonetheless this is indeed a difference somehow. Is this the most important difference? No, it isn’t.
It has been a long time…
What is the most important difference between websites and blogs? It’s about being up to date or timeless. Or it’s about being still valid. The info at a blog is expected to be valid at a certain point in time while the content on a website is expected to be timeless.
Of course there are plenty of exceptions to this but generally you assume that a website you end up on which is not a blog and which has no date marking when it was published contains still valid information. In contrast you will often not even read a blog entry after noticing that it was published two years or sometimes even 2 months ago.
When I started my SEO 2.0 blog I was surprised that my theme, DM Bloodless, has the date removed from the posts. After realizing it I thought about it and decided to let the date to be hidden.
Why?
I wanted my blog to both a timeless website and an up to date blog.
A few weeks later I published a post called 5 Dirty Blogging Tricks which covered this decision in a short sentence.
.
Blogsites combine the best of two worlds.
After almost 9 months of blogging at SEO 2.0 I am convinced that it was the right decision. Combining the advantages of websites and blogs is not as easy as I imagines though.
What to do?
You have either to refrain from publishing news or you have to find a way to deal with the fact that they are not timeless. You can:
- Add a date in the content of the post: “As October 2007 it has…”
- Add updates to a post “Update 11. December, 2007: The service has been discontinued by now”
- Delete old posts or rewrite them.
Who wants to update old posts which are rarely visited if it all? Well, I don’t in most cases. You can change the date though and republish them on top though. This way you save some time by not posting a completely new posting while also offering new insights, perspective or another update.
Which one of the two do you prefer?
Think about it and please add your opinion:
- What dis/advantages do you think this combination of blogsites does have?
- How else can you combine the advantages of both without doubling the workload?
- Do you update or delete your old postings?
- Am I right at all? What is the most striking difference between blogs and websites in your opinion?
- Who will become the next president of the United States of America?
Thus I won’t tell you that WordPress 2.5 has just been released this weekend!
This thing has 14 Comments
Great post Tad and those pics made my day. Thanks!
Thank you Tibi. I feel very honored to hear that from you. May the force be with you!
Great post. I agree, the Star Wars theme is very classy. There definitely is definitely a blending of what a blog did and what a traditional web site did, and makes for very interesting fodder as it evolves.
Kelly, I edited your comment: Please mind the commenting netiquette:
http://seo2.0.onreact.com/dofollow-blog-commenting-netiquette-vs-a-barbecue-party
tad of SEO 2.0
Very nice article, I haven’t thought about this…
Well done! This is one of the more clever posts I have seen recently. I think the photos explain it well too.
I too like to make blog posts timeless. For one good reason, you can make an very old post the newest post with a lot of comments on it already. You can easily update the content.
So tell me this. How old is this post? ;-)
Nice job!
The only real difference that I see is that blogs are over rated ways of publishing even more garbage on the internet.
Oh, and will serve to be the biggest single cause of middle finger RSI (and therefore lawsuits!), due to the inordinate amount of scrolling that is required!
Whatever happened to readability??!??!?
I actually had a Twitter conversation about this recently. I think the consensus was that the main difference between a blog and website is the communication style. A website is one-to-many communication. A blog is more of a one-to-many-many-to-one communication style. Wikis, forums, etc have their own communication models. Wiki’s are collaborative, not dialogue. Forums usually aren’t content heavy. They’re question-answer.
I get why people may want to create a blogsite - leave out timestamps. It generally keeps people on your site more…even if you go without posting for awhile. Personally though, as a reader, it’s annoying. For me, the main purpose of most blogs is communication…conversation. You ended your post with questions…encouraging dialogue. How can I be sure this wasn’t written a year ago and you’re no longer monitoring this site? Commenting could be a waste of my time.
I think creating a true blogsite requires the non-expectation of comments. The information presented has to be just that - information, not “answer-my-questions-and-discuss.” I think the prompting negates the timelessness of the post.
Great Article! I am in the process of trying to decide whether to get a new “website” or to build many static pages as the site around a blog. Something like The Revolution Theme by Briand Gardner. What is your feeling on the matter for a site that needs good call to action for real estate.
-Annie
I could not put it better myself! Especial the RSS-feed opinion.
Tad:
How old is this post?
Tina, if you roll over your name you see the date you commented on, so scroll up and…
I will find a solution to add the date without making everebody leave the “stale” content due to seeing the date at first.
Hi there, good post. I’d never really thought that much about blogs versus websites before but you make some really good points.
One thing though, I totally understand where you are coming from with regards timestamps, but it can be really frustrating to readers to not have a timestamp. If I find a blog post without a timestamp I’m less likely to read it because I won’t know if it’s a current topic or not (unless I know the blog well, in which case I know whats new).
It’s just a thought, but you might find it harder to pick up new readers if you don’t let them know whats new and whats old.
I think that the best of both worlds can be combined with the right set-up (like you say…CNN). I do not delete old posts - I want the shotgun-type exposure on the web. Right now…Obama will be the next Prez!
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[…] earn additional credibility doing this. Just mark the post as updated with the classic line from static websites in pre-blog times “Update [date]” and also describe what you updated. Many open source projects do it […]