Blog vs Website or A Website and a Blog

Many people have difficulty deciding whether or not to create a blog, a website or both. Mainly because they don't understand the difference between the two.

To understand the difference it's probably best to go back to before Blogs were common, and only websites existed.

A website is simply a collection of linked web pages located somewhere on the Internet.

Websites were, and still are, created using editing tools like Dreamweaver, FrontPage etc, and required a certain amount of technical know how to create and maintain.

Many early websites took the form of personal comments on many topics using diary or journal like entries. Although not called weblogs/Blogs they were in fact the early Blogs.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase weblog in the sidebar of his Blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999--

Source Wikipedia

The creation of tools to enable non technical users to create a blog, and free hosting service led to the rapid expansion of Blogs from 100 in 1997 to over 20 million in 2005.

So Blogs are just websites but with a journal/diary type structure. This is critical to understanding whether you need a:

A Blog or a Website or Both?

If the information you want to present fits into a diary format then a blog is an ideal choice, if it doesn't then you need a website. If it has both elements then you need both.

As an example imagine you are a widget manufacturer then you would use a standard website to describe your products, company, accept orders etc and a blog to deliver news type information like press releases, research news etc.

But if Blogs are just websites can't I just use a blog as a website just like people used a website as a blog?

Yes you can, but then you need to change the blog structure, and as the blogging tools are designed for the journal type structure then you need major changes to accomplish this task, and of course detailed knowledge.

Meaning it would be easier to use a standard website instead.

If your thinking of starting a blog then take a look at how to start a blog on the site. You may also find the A Blog By Any Other Name is Still a Website by Lorelle interesting.

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