After we finished their site designs, a couple of clients were looking for more interaction with site visitors, so we added a blog. We ruled out traditional guestbooks; even if we spam-proofed them, a one-way form didn’t achieve what the client wanted. The blogs make nice complements to their Web sites, and could be nicely customized to fit the look of the static web pages (See aaronschuerr.com/aaronsblog and gillianswanson.com/resources.) The more my clients adopt blogs, and the more I work with the three that I maintain for business and personal use, the more I think that it is a good choice for new client Web sites.

Some blog themes do a nice job of combining a lot of stable content with dynamic post content (e.g. the Revolution theme that I based this site on), and there are many plugins for the WordPress blog platform that I use. The plugins extend the blog themes to handle things like image galleries, online shopping, spam filtering in blog comments, notifying Google to index your site, et cetera, making it possible to develop a multi-faceted and lively site.

Blog Web pages are assembled dynamically in a browser at viewing time using PHP (server-side scripts) to process and present HTML (for defining page structure), CSS (for styling pages), and your data (posts, page content, and various blog options, that are stored in a MySQL database as you create the content). Traditional Web sites are static; the browser interprets the HTML and CSS and presents the page. Navigation is pretty much handled for you in a blog theme. That is, decisions about presenting blog pages and posts and where are already made in the theme. Unless you want to change that, you won’t have to code navigation and menus the way that you would in a traditional Web site design.

Additional criteria for my clients include whether they want to handle their own updates, how much they update, and whether they are more comfortable with the blog administration interface or HTML editors. There are other factors to compare in a static Web site versus a blog site that I think they should know about. Some of them are listed below.

  Traditional Web Site Blog
Hosting Typically you register a domain and pay a hosting service provider ($95
to $240) to host it.		 Although you can host your blog on your own server (as I do with my WordPress blogs), there are good options for free hosting: wordpress.com and blogger.com are popular and reliable. Typepad is also popular but charges a hosting fee. For sheer numbers of free themes and plugins, as well as tons of documentation (from WP, user forums, and blogs about WP), WordPress is hard to beat.
Software While there are many free tools for editing your Web pages, I find that they all lack something. Dreamweaver, at the hefty price of $399, is far superior to the free tools. Adobe seems to be abandoning the development of GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver and GoLive are not just editing tools, they allow you to do much more, from uploading files directly to your site, to creating slideshows. They also include starter templates in both HTML and CSS. In any case, you will probably need image editing software. I use a Mac where iPhoto is the free option and is adequate. (I can’t imagine being without Adobe PhotoShop, myself.) iPhoto can be extended with tools that do nifty things for web pages such as creating Web slideshows. Free HTML editors include Netscape Composer and its clone, Nvu. The blogging platform includes the editor. You will need no other unless you are a stickler for ensuring perfection (as I am). WordPress, for example, includes a simple editor that you can toggle between a WYSIWYG editor (a what you see is what you get, or visual editor), and an HTML code editor. These builtin editors are adequate for most purposes, and it is easy to upload and add an image to your text while you are editing. If you are doing anything special with images, chances are you’ll need image processing software. Windows comes with a little tool called Paint. I don’t know what other free options there are. The Mac comes with iPhoto, which allows you to organize your images into albums, as well as edit them, and save them into Web slideslideshows and QuickTime movies.There are free themes (templates for the look and layout of your blog) and plugins (add ons or extensions that enhance funtionality of your blog. Both are available free on the web.
Writing and Design In this scenario, you write and design on your own computer using an HTML editor or a Web publishing tool like Dreamweaver. Then you upload the finished work to the server. Some hosting services allow you to edit directly on the server through their control panels, but these are awkward editors at best. If you edit in both places (your computer and on the server ) you will have to keep good track of latest versions (did I edit that on my machine and upload? or did I edit it on the server the last time? which is the latest version of my page?). Unless your software is a Web publishing tool that includes a CSS editor, you’ll need a separate CSS editor, or else CSS know-how so you can edit CSS in a text file. You edit in real-time on the server. Typically what you are creating is a blog post or a blog page, so you just click on the page or post in your blog administration panel, or create a new one, and go to work in the editor. Click SAVE or PUBLISH and your content is live on the Web. Design is done for you via free blog themes. There are hundreds of free themes out there, and if you find a design that you like, you are done. If you want to customize the design, you will need to edit CSS files and possibly PHP files. You can accomplish a lot through the blog’s administration tool without getting your hands dirty in code if you have a theme that is nearly perfect for you to begin with. Many themes allow you to change the header image through a graphical user interface.
Search Engines To enhance search engine results by coding your pages intelligently, see the blog article about SEO on this site. That article describes other things to do to alert search engines to your site. Search engines love blogs. Blogs are updated regularly (or else why have one?), and they are rich with links. Something called a Blogroll is available to you as a part of the blogging administration software. Adding links to sites that you want to share or that complement yours is very easy to do. You can call your blogroll anything you want, e.g., My Friends, Useful Links, Resources, or you can accept the default name of Blogroll. (I renamed mine”Links” because “blogroll” is jargon and I like to make my sites accesible to even novices.) So fresh content containing relevant keywords, and relevant links go a long way toward getting you noticed.
Can I do it myself? The traditional Web site option is more of a challenge for completely new users. However, there are hosting services, some even specific to your field of work, that include site building tools. Once you learn how to use a blog administration tool, you can keep flying solo with the blog option. If you stay out of the CSS and PHP files (or learn some basics and/or get a little help), it is pretty hard to break your blog. I’m working on enabling less technical clients with a simple blog setup and some training that will save them design and maintenance dollars.

There is never a substitute for good design. Tested Web templates (the good ones are not free), and the majority of free blog themes behave reliably, but be discerning in picking an attractive and accessible design.

If you choose to hire someone to design your web site, you’ll find out that prices vary wildly. I have followed estimates as high as $10K with my own estimates of $2000 to $2500. To my way of thinking, $3K and up should be reserved either for the original design of a simple site, or the modified design or a more complex one. But the point that I want to make here is that unless you are departing very far from a free or other off-the-shelf blog theme, it should cost you less money to hire someone to set up and make design modifications to a blog than it would a comparable web site. (I am sure there are some designers out there who will disagree. But a blog is very nearly ready-made, faster for me to set up, and the content will ultimately be written/provided by the client, so I can’t justify charging as much for a comparable blog as I do for a Web site.)

You’d be lucky to get a good Web site designed for under $2000, so going the blog route would likely be less expensive. You could even try to go it alone with a blog. Blogs are not just for personal commentary anymore; they are robust and exensible platforms for business sites and for artists who want to show their portfolios. Just think through what you want to accomplish, how you want your site to be organized, what you want it to convey, and whether you are up for a fairly modest learning curve. Then explore the blog themes and blogging platforms out there (or see if your server offers auto-installation of the free WordPress software), and have some fun.