One of my readers Louise asked me a question via email this morning wanting to know what the difference between a blog and a website is.
What is a website?
A website can be a site as complex as Facebook or as simple as one page with some content (could just be text, video, picture etc) on a topic.
Blogs are a type of website.
When someone is referring to a website they could be referring to their blog, a sales page/video, an optin/landing page, a forum, web based brochure about their company, eCommerce store.
I think you get the idea. A website can be ANYTHING.
Websites can be designed by hand (coding with HTML) or use special software/scripts to create them.
If you are using a traditional website it can be a lot harder to make changes to it and that is why a lot of people have switched over to blogs.
What is a blog?
Blogs are easy to update web sites that tend to run on WordPress, there are other blogging platforms but WordPress runs 25%+ of ALL websites on the internet. WordPress is relatively easy to learn and you can use various Themes and Plugins (some are free, others are paid)
Blogs, can be simply diaries (we get the word blog from the words web log), or they can be much more complex sites even sites like the New York Times and CNN use WordPress to power parts of their sites. Here is a list of some HUGE companies that use WordPress.
Blogs tend to be more interactive than websites as it’s easy to have an area for people to comment on your blog posts.
The beauty of having a blog is once you’ve set it up you can easily make changes yourself and don’t have to rely on someone with more technical skills to make changes to your site.
You can either download and install WordPress for free yourself on your web hosting account, use their free hosting, or install WordPress via your control panel (Cpanel) of your web host. All of these options are free as long as you have web hosting.
Which should you choose?
For the longest time I didn’t like blogging and preferred making sites by hand. As the web has been changed and evolved, I have learned that people crave websites that load fast, look professional, are easy to use and are mobile responsive (look nice on your phone/tablet and on your computer).
In this day and age most people, especially marketers, should stick with a proven platform like WordPress to run their web site.
Keep in mind, you may need to get some other WordPress plugins or themes (there are plenty of free ones) to make it look the way you want, but once you’ve found the right combination you can make VERY nice looking websites that are clean, crisp, professional, easy to use, mobile friendly.
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