Site Structure Question

[CrustyAdmin]

I have a site I inherited by choice. It hasn't been touched in 6 years. To domain expired, before I acquired the content so there is no worry about losing ranking, it's gone so no worry about redirects.

The site was an informational site about a hobby I'm interested in. Basically the site was a blog before blogging caught on. The guy(s) would post about three times a week and include questions and answers submitted by visitors via email in subsequent updates to the site.

Much of the information is evergreen, so my first thought was I don't want it out there with the dates on it, so I started putting together a static site without dates on anything. I started to think realize that the chronology seemed important in the evolution of the site.

Probably the larger problem I'm faced with is categorizing the content so it's not just a list of 100 articles. I could make category pages and list the articles that fit in each category. Some articles would be in two or three categories.

Then it hit me, wouldn't I just be better off using a blog? Wordpress.com would work fine. I'd just point the domain there and be off. No intention of hosting WP myself due to security issues, etc.

I'm normally not someone who favors a blog for a site that is content rich and not what scent of candle I burned today, but with this site the dates and categories and tagging seem like they'd save a bunch of manual hassle.

Thoughts as to traditional site or blog? Is including the dates a bad idea? Thanks

[JS_Harris]

Host it yourself or you'll be donating the long term value of your work to that other site. The security issues are minimal and quickly repaired, just keep backups religiously.

If I'm reading an old article I'd like some indication that it is old so I'm inclined to say leave the dates.

[tangor]

Keep the dates. Provides an historical look which, if complemented by updated content, adds to the strength of the material. As to whether a "blog type" or "cms" or "static" that's a matter of presentation choice. Me... I like static pages, but I'm old school (these days) so what do I know? :)

[CrustyAdmin]

Thanks for the replies. JS_Harris, I'm not sure how I'm helping the value of Wordpress.com if I'm using my own domain name? I realize I can't monetize it there etc, but for this project that's not a plan anyway and if it were I could just export and install wordpress on my own server. Or am I missing something?