Forum Moderators: not2easy
What are the advantages / disadvantages of using a Blogspot blog for this project as opposed to publishing on my own site without a blog structure?
FarmBoy
Other than that, IMHO it depends on what you mean by "news". Just because of how blogs are set up, the news on a blog would have to be "Here today... gone tomorrow with something else here." Newer stuff will replace older stuff, and then the older stuff will be harder to find. If you want people to be able to easily locate and read previous articles, a site would be much better.
There are ways, of course, to add some blog-type functionality to a website - the ability for people to comment on an article, etc.
In general terms, a website (+/- a corporative blog) is much more needed in large or small building reputation companies), whereas blogs without a website are preferred generally in some businesses in which constant contact with the target audience is a must, e.g. media, or some small retailers and so on. I am saying again, these are only same very basic principles to step on.
Good luck,
Frida
Both if you can do it, if not it depends on how you work. If you want to add new content like a diary entry use blogs. If you want to keep older material accurate and up to date use a web site.
Blogs seem to generate more feedback IMO but web sites give a more formal web presence.
news site geared towards a particular industry
From this very brief description, I may only wonder what you exactly have in mind. Anyway, I am one with the last post above - if you need to have more interactive content, have a blog.
If your want to place the accent on a more formal web presence, go for a website and
good luck,
The only question becomes which blogging platform to use. They're all pretty easy. You can have a blogspot blog via blogger set up within minutes (of course, tweaking it and making it 'unique' takes somewhat longer!).
If you use blogger, you can buy a domain and point it at your blog (so that your blog is www.example.com instead of example.blogspot.com), or you can FTP to a server of your choice.
Wordpress is the other main option, and tends to be the platform of choice for most "serious" bloggers. Many hosting services have wordpress pre-installed, so you just set it up, and choose a theme (there are thousands of free themes out there, and plenty more that you can pay for).
Blogger and Wordpress are both optimised for SEO in several ways. My recommendation is buy a domain name, go to your hosting service, and set up a wordpress blog. Find a professional-looking wordpress theme, tweak it a bit, and you're away.
If you want businesses to access your site then stay off any blogging service. I know that our office firewall blocks Blogspot.
I'm curious as the the rationale for this?
Has your management concluded that information on blog sites is less valuable than information found elsewhere? More unreliable? Frivolous, and not covering business topics? Or is the concern to prevent employees from blogging themselves?
Dunno what your company does, but I can't imagine this policy in a software company, for example. I find that I often find that either a blog or a forum provides the ONLY answer to tough problems. More than once, I've found just a single blog providing the only available "how to" on a given topic.
I don't know how Blogspot works - you definitely want to have your own domain name.
I'm adding blogging to a couple of my existing sites with blogger. You can opt for your own hosting. You set up an ftp account and a folder for the blog on your host (usually /blog)
Then you go into blogger and fiddle with the settings to get things working. (ie, some hosts require the ftp login to be userid@domain.com and others just want the user ID.).. Set up a specific FTP account that just gives access to the blog folder and below to limit your exposure)
That has been working OK although getting the templates to match the site is a bit tedious.
I have a domain I've been wanting to do something with for a while. Blogger also allows the option of pointing your domain to the blogger hosted blog.
If you do set up a blog, I found some info on pointing the XML feed to google and yahoo sitemaps. It's pretty easy to do.
cg
That has been working OK although getting the templates to match the site is a bit tedious
With Wordpress you can create "pages" so that your blog acts like a static site and still have the blogging function as well. That's your best bet - two in one with some great open source software.
I know that another major alternative is typepad, but I've never looked into it.
Anyone got insights to share about typepad? Is it open source? Is it good?
why are you using blogger rather than wordpress?
Either one would have been good. I had set Wordpress up for a client a while back, right before there was some security hole. Wordpress seemed pretty good but customizing it semmed a little tedious.
Blogger just seems a little easier to customize for me and what I need to do right now.
Also, I had heard that there were some issues with wordpress and getting spidered properly (I may be wrong on that.).. I figured that since Blogger was owned by Google they either have the search engine end figured out or they will shortly (Again, that could be a wrong assumption)
Anyway, it was one of those times where I went with the thinking of George Patton:
I would rather have a good plan today than a perfect plan two weeks from now -- General George S. PattonI could get blogger up and running quickly for a couple of sites.
Anyone planning on putting up a blog should compare the major choices though
cg
There are some plugins that really help when using Wordpress as a CMS.
"Fold Page List" displays a folding page tree. There are also plugins to create static front pages or leave content that is sticky to the front page. There are also some hacks and plugins to make "wordpress seo friendly"
It's almost unlimited what you can do with it.
If you want to use Blogger with your own domain name, you’ll need a web hosting account. And you’re stuck with their “Classic template” which is another branding hit.
Blogger maintains the blog application automatically. Compare that to WP or Movable Type, where you will need to upgrade every year or so.
WP and MT are for hands-on people who like to mess with their own code. You can do more design and content customization with them, including build static pages.
As someone who has built a bunch of business, pro-bono, and personal blogs based on MT, I really admire the simplicity of Blogger. It’s like going from a stick shift to a slushbox. But if I was trying to make a more corporate-looking news site – and avoid the MFA look – I’d think hard about spending the extra money and time.
Blogger/blogspot is a simple way to get your message out but because it's "so easy" to set up I have a hard time respecting blogger/blogspot sites. There seems to be a good percentage of them that are splogs (spam blogs) or blogs set up by people who have never had a site before and are thrilled they can put something up on their own. (which is really the target audience for blogger in my mind)
In other words since there's a smaller percentage of "serious/company websites" using blogger I wouldn't want to risk visitors quickly leaving my site because they assume I'm a splog from their past experience. The reality is visitors decide quickly whether they think you have value regardless how much great content you have.
Blogger is a wonderful tool - I just wouldn't put a company site on it. If I wanted a personal or hobby site - it's great. It might also work well if your target group is technically unsavvy since they probably wouldn't notice the difference between Blogger and other options anyway. : )
If you really want to use blogger than my advice is to make sure you have your own domain name. That way if you decide to move your site to a different cms later you don't lose the value of the content and links you have on mycompany.blogspot.com with search engines.
Don't forget drupal.
Wordpress is pretty good for starters, you can find lot of host who will have it preinstalled.
I personally take blogspot article with little bit of skepticism. What kind of legitimate company can't fork few hundred for a website?
Wordpress has other features to make you part of their network. I have no idea whatsoever how much traffic either generate, as I don't blog on either service.
I did try both services to see their features, but didn't really make any posts. Blogspot doesn't come close to wordpress. Development pretty much died when Google took over. Wordpress is a dynamic company. Sometimes I find their ideas and coding fantastic. Other times exasperating.
It should be pointed out, also, if using Blogspot, meta tags are pre-set to "nofollow" on links. Easy to change, however.
Overall, this thread turned out to be rather amusing just to see the different opinions and to find out that I actually know more about blogging than a lot of the commentators.
A blog, for news on a specific topic especially, makes tons of sense. I do one on baseball and one on stocks. They rock. The others are less focused or seasonal.
But having a blog is much better because of the Web 2.0 concept we can share news through feeds, RSS and all.
But having a blog is much better because of the Web 2.0 concept we can share news through feeds, RSS and all.
