Blog vs Website
Many people have difficulty deciding whether or not to build 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 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.
WordPress and Other Blogging Platforms
Special software/software platforms have been developed for Blogging. The most popular being WordPress.
The main characteristic of all blogging platforms has been the ease of use by novice web authors.
They all make it easy to add and change content using a simple web browser without any need to install web editing software like FrontPage/Dreamweaver.
Because of this ease of use they have been adopted by many new website owners and used as traditional websites rather than as blogs.
WordPress has for many years been adding features like pages/static front pages which make it easy to use as a standard website.
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