Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Differences Between a Web Blog and a Static Website

If you been around the internet before social networking and web applications reigned the World Wide Web, you probably encountered countless static websites. Static websites were popular at the time since internet speeds were slow and static websites rendered quickly and were compatible with the earlier web browsers. Now with most households and businesses running high speed connections and advancements in web development, the Web Blog slowly took over leaving static websites to have minimal usage.

Static websites are not by any means extinct from the web because new web designers often use them for developing basic websites quickly since they do not require much programming knowledge. However, knowing how to make a Web Blog is advantageous and can serve as a springboard in developing good content for your site which can lead to making money online. Here are some notable differences between a blog and a traditional static website.

Updating Content

The task that web designers face when updating a website is fetching the web pages that need updating from their host and editing their HTML using a text editor or WYSIWIG program. This may not seem like much for experienced designers, but sites that need constant updating like news sections can be quite a chore and usually leads to discouragement in keeping the site up to date. Blogs work differently since they do not entirely compose of HTML. This additional coding (usually PHP) allows the blog to update the content dynamically without any need to manually edit the page.

Blogs also have better syndication since the entries utilize a database rather than having them being stored on the actual page. This allows entries or topic titles to be fetched from other pages without much effort.

Design and Templating

Both the Web Blog and the static website have unlimited possibilities in terms of what the design looks like. There are also plenty of sites that offer free templates for both blogs and regular websites and many of the newest ones sporting the trendy Web 2.0 looks. The implementation of these templates is what differs here. When you download a static website template, what you usually get is a fixed design with lots of dummy text.

This means that if you wish to transfer the content of your old template, you need to do a lot of editing in placing the content and that may require adjusting margins and other settings to make sure everything fits with the template. The template may come with extra graphics and layered graphics files for added personalization, but the implementation isn?t so great unless you are starting a site from scratch.

Blogs, on the other hand, are usually equipped with a template engine that complies with a certain standards so that all the needed content is fetched when the template is changed. This makes implementation very simple allowing users to change the style on the fly. Developing a custom template is however much more difficult than creating a static template because custom templates must follow certain rules while static templates allow more breathing room.

There is still a place for static websites and that?s for people who want to make websites that do not update very often. Otherwise it is better to have just a Web Blog.

Learn the top programs that will teach you How to Get Rich. You can also find out more about a Web Blog from Brian Garvin and Jeff West.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Garvin

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