Blogs or Websites

If its on the internet - its a website. A blog is a type of website.

Asking if you like blogs or websites better, is like asking if you like toyota cars or cars better. A toyota car is a car.

OK Smart-alec, what he means is would you prefer a five page static site to a wordpress dynamic (website) blog-format. You know what he's asking.

These kind of answers are what makes me almost NOT want to join in some discussions.

I personally, think there is still a use for websites. For a business who's products and services don't change much (think Brick & mortar, retail, etc) a static site is fine.

If you're wanting more SEO power, and the opportunity to inform your prospects with more details and updates, of course you would use a blog-type site.

There are options of static front pages on blogs, (check your wordpress themes for static page options) and that could be how you blend both types of sites. I always install wordpress first when starting a site, becuase I know it's the platform that I will use and get the most mileage from.

It depends on your need. If you want to look like a professional + if you want a custom design and functionality of your own(Scripts etc.), a website is better.

if you want to have a predefined design + limited functionality, a blog is better and cheapest (even free) option. This is best for personal use.

I hope you understand this.

I would say the two are essential since their functions are complimentary rather than each being a substitute for the other.

But starting out, if you can't afford to have a website, then the more important is a blog.

There are however free options these days for websites too, though you are slightly restricted in your use of it.

What works great for someone else may not work for you. Before you pick one, you need to ask yourself a few questions - How much time do you have to devote to your site? Can you handle the maintenance of a blog? Or, would it be better for you to have a static site that only needs to be updated every so often to keep it fresh, instead of daily blog posts?

I read somewhere that something like 90% of bloggers don't keep up with it, and their blogs are gone (or never updated) 3 months after they start.

Of course, you could always have the best of both worlds and have a blog on your site

Decades ago in my journalism school the very first lesson for reporters was this:

If you ask stupid questions, you will get stupid answers

In my opinion,if you want to sell products or become affiliate, website is far better than blog. Because people don't trust websites for buying products from them. A beautiful website with good content can help you to earn money.

Create a mother site with a blog. You can actually integrate a blog in your website.. works well for me. Blogs are awesome for SEO and can pull a lot of traffic from social sites plus, you will be able to interact with your readers and build trust.

It is easy to make a "static" website as "dynamic" as Wordpress

Wordpress is hard to REALLY master, and the time you need is better spent in learning how to use and HTML/CSS template and fill in the blanks

Ever wondered WHY Google has its own category for "Blogs", as it has one for Video?

Ever wondered if you REALLY can trust all these plugins?

Ever wondered if it worth to invest money in WP for the great templates and plugins?

Ever wondered if Google expects from "dynamic" Blogs nearly DAILY postings. If you do not want that, you need to invest the tim,e to learn to make WP more "stable"

-> Wordpress is a one click installation, but a lifelong perspiration/occupation

Ever wondered why WP gets hacked often (my "stable" but as dynamic sites in simple HTML haven't once)

Ever wondered WHY people offer you all these free clutches , ahem Plugins, for your Business?

Ever wondered if you really should base your Biz on somebody else's (even if it is free and CC) foundation?

No, I started with Wordpress but today am very happy I invested some more time to learn HTML

I know this will fly in the face of most of you - perhaps most Gurus cannot even honestly compare HTML with Wordpress
not to mention know how to do HTML or even how to do "dynamic" HTML

-> perhaps it makes sense to think and NOT do what everybody else does

Disclaimer: I was so disappointed with Wordpress that I have written a tutorial and sell it, so I am also financially interested in my opinion

My 2cts

Fire away

Dan

I like blogs better. It's simple. I can have one up and running in minutes and one beautifully designed in 15 minutes. Adding content is far easier if you add new content regularly on a blog than on an html website.

If you plan on adding content often and updating then a wordpress blog with a nice theme is the way to go. Very easy to use, looks nice, and can all be managed from the dashboard on the backend. I always wondered why everyone was using wordpress when I was still building static pages. That all changed after I built my first few Amazon Wordpress review sites.

It works great for me, as I'm always posting new fresh content and trying to get Googles attention.

I too like blog as its easy to set up with low cost and help to get in touch more with the readers.However I dont think there will be any problem if a blog is attached with a website and in fact it will be the best option If you set up a site and add a blog with it.

Urrgh...

As a developer, these discussions do my head in.

A blog is a website.
A website is a website.
A website can be both static and dynamic.
HTML is markup language, it doesnt define a website.
A website can be made up of a multitude of programming languages.

....etc etc etc

Whats best?

A website with a blog on it. :rolleyes:

All depends. For the most part it seems that blogs do well in the SERP's because of the constant addition of content, but at the end of the day I would say it all depends on different factors when deciding on which way to go. Is it a competitive niche? Is it a site that you are going to update with content on a regular basis? Is it the type of business where blog posts are needed and people are gonna read the posts on a regular basis. No sense in adding posts all the time if no one is reading them, and it is not helping your ranking and traffic. I'm a big believer in doing as little work as possible (call me lazy if you want) but doing things that are not needed and do not help isn't necessary IMHO. You just have to take it on a case by case basis.

Food for thought...

Well this is all about perception, with Wordpress the lines are getting blurred. The better question is do you want Subscribers,Allow folks to comment and how do you want your site to look and operate?

A lot of folks have trouble wrapping their brain around this but the blog and the website are one in the same. In short you can make a post or static page look anyway your want taking full advantage of the Wordpress platform for SEO, Faster indexing, and Content management. You can do a mixture of both which for internet marketing is ideal because you want static information pages as well as a blog to establish authority to keep people enaged.

It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For most of my projects I can use WordPress and build a blog or site using their content management system. If I want to build something special I may need to code it myself. Overall, most sites can be completed using WordPress (both or otherwise).

I think you can do well with either a blog or a website (I my mind I know the difference). With a blog, you have many build in functions that don't require any special technical skills to use. Whereas, if you wanted to make a "regular" website do the same thing a blog can do, them you'll need some skill or know how. For example, blogs have a RSS feed, whereas a plain HTML static page site doesn't so you'll need to take additional steps to add a feed to such a site.

I was always kind of anti-blog, except for in blogs. But, I'm switching my tune.

Take a look at what other sites are doing. For instance, it appears that Assistly.com has a site and a blog, whereas ZendDesk has a blog and their home page is a page on that blog, not a separate site.

I guess if you are planning to have a blog anyway, then it probably makes sense to create the rest of the site in the blog as well. Then you can manage everything in one place. If you aren't having a blog, then you need to consider if the add-ons are things you need, which may often be the case, as there are so many fantastic things Wordpress can do with all the plugins.

So, perhaps the question becomes, not should I have a blog or a website, but rather, is there any reason not to have everything in a Wordpress blog?

One reason is that it might be harder to understand/comprehend how to make your web site portion of the site look the way you want. Making it part of a blog is, well, different than I'm used to for sure, but I think I figured it out after a little research.

John.

Personally, I mostly use a mailing list. Remember, some gurus do say that "the money is in the list" and that's for a reason. I would recommend you build your list.

I've done well with both but prefer websites.

You'll see a lot of WordPress sites using the home page layout of a CMS. Then they link to their blog page. The problem is they have so many damn links visitors start clicking to go everywhere on the site. If you're a small fry that doesn't work.

You gotta guide them to your one call-to-action, preferably your optin. If you have to it could be your Get It Today button or link.

Note: The word Buy can be a fail. Nobody wants to "Buy" anything, they just want to "$47 Get It Today -- Click here ..."

Sometimes you have to sell directly from your site, but if you don't have to a good way to build a solid online business is devote your entire site to giving away your best content via your blog and collecting an e-mail address.

The Home Page Layout:

- Huge Title Centered
- Sub-Title Centered
- A video. Possibly a slider. Some type of eye candy needs to go next
- Then another heading
- Then your content
- Place an optin at strategic points on that front page
- The blog link can sit with your Home | About | Blog | Contact links in the nav menu
- A lot of gurus place testimonials from well known folks on that front page

Your front page needs to be dedicated to collecting the e-mail address. Without the optin you're going no where fast, unless you just want to sell something once.

Even if you're selling from your site, be sure to set it up so you grab the buyers e-mail address in your auto-responder.

Trust is important right now, but as time goes on it will be all that matters for us small fry selling stuff online.

The bottom line:

However you want to do it, think of having the goal of one call-to-action on the home page. Then use the rest of your site, blog and other pages to deliver content people can't get anywhere else. Your best stuff and free.

Ok - this is how I explain to my clients the difference between post and pages - which I think is essentially what the OP is asking.

Wordpress is essentially web design software. Instead of installling the software on your computer you install it on your server.

You can use posts or pages.

If you use pages then the content is "static". Imagine I'm writing about breeds of horses. If I want pages about the different breeds, each page will have a name and each page will appear separately in the menubar. So I might have a drop down menu with a separate page for each breed of horse that I'm writing about.


If you use posts - you are, in essence, using a blog. Each new post you add to the blog appears above the previous one on the blog's front page. So you will usually see a series of extracts, one above the other. You can click on each "post" to read the rest of the content (which has its own unique URL, just as pages do)

That's a basic explanation - and you can muddy the waters using custom menus.

With Wordpress you can mix static pages and also add a blog. So if we go back to my horse breeds analogy - you might have a page for each breed of horse, but you might also want to write about the daily happenings in your yard, or the shows you attend, the prizes you've won, etc. You could add a new page for each one, but the menubar would become unusable. That's where the blog comes in - it's what blogs were designed for - a sort of online diary. With each post simply appearing on the blog's homepage one above the other.

First, while you can have a blog without a website, with services such as wordpress.com and blogger.com, ultimately they still have a website at the top of their pyramid...

A blog is a website, but a website isn't a blog. Today, with all the variety and power available in themes and plugins for the WordPress platform, by going with wordpress you can have either or both, now or later.

It is the premier platform for internet warriors today because of its virtually unlimited possibilities, is robust capabilities, and the very fact that the world as a whole has endorsed it as a standard.

With that said...

Get a basic Hostgator starter account, install the free wordpress platform, search for a decent wordpress theme (template) free or inexpensive but related to your plans... add some appropriate plugins to do things like auto submitting your site map to search engines, etc...

Add products sales pages to the "website function" (pages), then post topical articles chronologically to the "blog" function (posts), rinse and repeat, again and again.

Then sign up for an inexpensive aweber or constant contact account, locate some give-aways to get people to sign up to your list, and start building a list by marketing your site in every (free) way possible...

acquire (free or purchase) several of the ebooks about marketing your website for free or very little, and rinse and repeat, again and again.

See, it is simple, just very tedious, time-consuming, and oft time boring as many jobs are.

It really depends what your needs are. I use both a static website for some things and a blog for other things... You may need to be more specific...

I go for blog. It is very easy to set-up and maintain.

I choose blog because it is friendly user. You can easily set-up the theme and the plugins.

I like blog，sharing my blog：blog.geminideal.com

i usually go for websites but it depends on your need

Wordpress sucks. Buy my site building service!!

~kev~ is right

We can use both. Your Main WEBSITE and do a BLOG to promote your site.

I would say it depends on what you are selling.

If you're selling a product / app, then a traditional website structure is probably more effective as it helsp create the brand awareness you want.

If you are selling an affiliate product, and are doing so by means of reviews, then a blog structure site is probably better, as it brings across a more personal viewpoint, which is effective in review driven sales.

It depends on what do you want to achieve and how much time have you got on your hands?
A blog is a website that needs constant maintenance, you need to dedicate some time to write daily and to interact with your subscribers. You must add content regularly, daily its ideal ,then you'll be doing SEO and the rank of your site will have a better chance to go up quicker.
An static website will take longer to rank unless you have some kind of blog linked to your website. Google likes to see good content.

Mildred

It really depends on what you'll be using it for. What kind of content are you going to be posting? If it's more like a daily journal or news updates, than a blogs is best. But if it's static pages and the site really isn't going to change that ofter, a html site or something similar is probably your best bet.

Blogs are great for starting business. It's easy to install it and to keep them clear. There are great plug-ins for wordpress, you can do almost everything with them.