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Blog or Website? Wordfeeder Goes Off
Note: this is not the most well-written article, but the information accurately sums up my frustration with blogsites. I know that a lot of you are pro-blog, but these are my reasons for sticking with tried-and-true HTML sites for myself and my clients.
Which should you set up for your online business: a blog, or a website? The debate rages on. Those who have had good experiences using Wordpress or Sixapart tend to be pro-blog. What's not to love, they say. You get the freedom of being able to log in and post whenever you want, from anywhere, knowing little to nothing about technology. The posts on a blog get indexed fast and furious.
Even so: I've been blogging for as long as I've had my company website, http://wordfeeder.com, (currently seven years), and I STILL vote for a good old-fashioned, HTML website hands down. Why?
A website is more stable. Let's say you forget to renew your hosting, and suddenly your website or blog disappears from the web. Where does it go? How difficult is it to retrieve the information?
If you have a blog, I'm afraid you're S.O.L. The MySQL database where it lives is no longer in existence. What happens to all those posts? I believe they plunge into the Great Abyss. Granted, many webhosts back up their databases, and all it takes is a phone call to get back your data. But... what if it turns out yours doesn't? What if you really didn't like your hosting company, and were looking to switch? Now you must go through the hassle of getting them to retrieve your data only to turn around and leave them flat for another company. Can you really pull that off?
With an HTML website, the files live right on your computer, tucked away, safe and sound, in their little folder. Or, they live on the computer of your web designer. Now, some may say that it's just as easy to lose your computer files, if, say, you're attacked by a virus. But let's keep in mind that removable file storage/backup solves this problem. I use the Maxtor One Touch system for backing up my hard drive. I've had probably 3 viruses in seven years, but never once have I lost a website file. I have, however, said goodbye to entire blogs, because I wasn't in the right place at the right time, lost my hosting, and the blog just vanished into thin air.
Some might argue that it's just as easy to type up your blog posts in Word documents, then upload the content to your blog... that way, if one day your blog does go down, you'll still have every file on your computer. The truth is that no one blogs in this manner. It's much easier to just log on and let your thoughts fly out of your fingers. I have tried my darndest to be a good girl and write up my blog posts in Word ahead of time. There's just something about that magical posting area that makes it impossible to do this...
Even if you do have all the documents saved in MS Word, you'll likely lose ALL the images and any formatting that you applied on your blog. That makes for some time-consuming fix-its once you finally decide to relaunch a new blog using the old posts. And once you lose the images, they, too, are likely gone forever.
Another downside of blogs is that you really must know XML design at an advanced level if you want your blog to "look" like a website. Sure, Wordpress makes it simple to add static pages to your blog... but the control is simply not there. Go ahead, try to break up those pages into multple columns and rows. Attempt to add keyword-rich links to the sidebar and other areas, or to split the page into subheads. See how far you get. An advanced blogger would know how to do this... however, most people who are not quite willing to scrape together the hefty chunk of change that a Superblogger requires.
Some would also argue that you can get whatever you want in a blog by finding the right theme. I disagree. The truth is that it takes hours upon hours to pore through the existing Wordpress themes. New themes are being created every day, from all parts of the world. More choices, sure, but this is like driving the long, long, long, LONG way home on a trip that could have taken ten minutes. In the end, you don't even know if the blog theme that you selected based on visual appeal is stable at all. If you encounter a functionality issue, how easy will it be to fix?
Another fact about blogs: try having one custom made (meaning, you find a theme you like, and then you hire a blog tech to tweak the back end so that the sidebar widgets, headlines, and header look exactly as you envision. Great, now I have my very own personalized theme! I guarantee you that as soon as Wordpress comes out with a new version of its software, you will attempt to upgrade and watch your carefully designed blog just crumple. I just had this happen to a client's blog today. The person I had outsourced the blog to said, "The blog promptly broke." Great, so pick another theme... and kiss that money you spent on a custom theme goodbye forever! Time and dollars wasted.
Dreamweaver makes your content far more manageable than is possible with a blog. A website designer who understands how to properly use page templates and link libraries can organize your site in such a way that it only takes minutes to add all kinds of keyword-rich menus and sidebars as well as sections of your website. What this boils down to is a more intuitive design that "leads" people to the sale, as well as guides search engine spiders through your content for the most efficient indexing.
Most people think this isn't so important, but it's actually the key to playing the online game and winning.
I come across a fair share of clients, coaches in particular, who lean toward blogs over websites due to the control-at-your-fingertips aspect of blogging. For those who want the best of both worlds, you really don't have to give up one for the other. Simply have a website AND a blog. Use the website as an ever-expanding hub of information, and the blog, where you can get a little more personal, to type what's on your mind (within reason), and do it with little to no assistance from your web tech person. You can put a link to your blog right in the main navigation of your website, and of course, you can add links to specialized pages of your site, from the blog.
And if ever the blog collapses, you still have the more "professional" part of your marketing perfectly in tact.
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