I got a great question last week.

Michael  submitted a question from my contact form.

I really love your site!

I'm considering an info-website about digital audio, music servers, how to
preserve your analog record collection etc.

Would you recommend a blog or a website? I plan to monetize mostly with
affiliate stuff and/or Adsense but who knows - I might develop some
commercial products in the future. Does this still fit into a blog style
website?

Thanks for your ideas,

Michael

This is a great question because some of you may not know the difference between a blog and a web site.  Traditional web sites are created using software like Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver.  You create the pages on your home computer and upload them via FTP to your web server.

A blog is different.

A blog is kind of like having some helpful software which runs on your web site.  You don’t have to have tools like Frontpage or Dreamweaver because the blog software has that stuff built in.

The other thing about blogs is you typically can use them to create more complicated web sites.  You don’t have to run a blog, you can add regular web pages, you can add advanced plugins, etc.  I’ve seen some blogs which are actually ecommerce web sites or membership sites.

I prefer Wordpress as my blogging platform but if you are looking to blog and want to do some more sophisticated things check out Drupal.     It is more of a content management system.  Basically it helps you build and manage sophisticated web sites and can include blogs.  Some other content management systems to look at are Joomla and PHPNuke.

You can also setup a basic blog with a platform like Wordpress.  You can then expand Wordpress as your site grows using what are called “wordpress plugins”.  So you can start simple and work your way up and create a more sophisticated web site.

Even if you start a regular web site I encourage you to put a blog on your site.  Blogs add so much value to a site and can help you get new readers as well as better search engine rankings.

Did this help answer your questions?  If  you have more questions about blogs vs. web sites leave me a comment or contact me on the contact form.

- Ben Fitts

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