When I first began to establish an Internet presence there was really only one practical way to do it – build a website.
Those were the days of online communities like GeoCities or Angelfire and many millions of online users picked up a bit of HTML and established a place on the Web. If they were like me, it was strictly amateur hour.
I’ve done lots of coding over the years, and in the late 1990s I learned enough HTML to be dangerous. My old website is still up there as a reminder of how bad things used to be. HTML is only one part of the picture – to be a serious website developer you need to learn Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript. My son-in-law – who is nowhere near as much of a geek as I am – put in the time to learn CSS and he made some quite passable sites compared to mine.
The other major problem with a website is that it’s static. You do a page. Then if things change, you redo it. If you want to write about a new topic, it’s a new page. You have to worry about navigational links. And you have to write the code correctly and with some creative flair. The means is more important than the end, frankly. It’s fun if you just want to be a geek I suppose.
A blog didn’t really exist in its current form back when I built my site 15 years ago. A blog is dynamic. You write an article and it appears at the top. Older posts move down. Instead of having to sign a Guestbook, your readers can comment on a post with ease.
You can start blogging in five minutes if you sign up with Google Blogger or WordPress. Even if you want to satisfy your inner geek and have your own domain, you can install the WordPress blogging software with a couple of clicks and maybe it takes 10 minutes before you write your post. If you want a little different look than standard WordPress Twenty Fourteen you can choose from thousands of professionally made themes and choose something that’s right for you. This Bayse theme I’m using is specific for personal blogs and storytelling.
The blogging software is slowly converging with website creation software and the hybrid product is called CMS (Content Management System.) At this point CMS makes a nice website that looks vaguely like a blog. So I think there’s a way to go before blogging software takes over the Web.
In my view the difference between a static website and a blog is similar to the difference between a computational computer program and a spreadsheet. The program gives you more flexibility but you have to learn all the nuances of coding to make it really cook. The spreadsheet just lets you get on with the job.
At this point in my life I’m probably a better story teller than a programmer so I’ll stick to blogging.
I’m good at reading the blogs}: