(Part 1)

If at any point you’ve contemplated posting something to the internet, then you’ve faced the software decision “web or blog”?

Recently I made this choice. It was a valuable decision. It forced me to think about what I wanted my business to look like, instead of going with an off the hip decision to later regret.

Modern blogs and traditional websites are pretty tight neighbours and these days it’s near impossible to figure out which is which strictly by site… er… sight. You won’t be able to just  follow the pretty pictures, but need to actually understand the madness behind the scenery.  

What exactly is a website?

On the techie side, a website is a collection of pages or “web pages” which can include images, videos or other digital assets all under a common address or “Uniform Resource Locator”  (URL). Generally the access point is a simple URL which is another name for the “home page”. 

Each page of a web is a document that’s typically written in plain text with formatting instructions that you can play with called Hypertext Markup Language or the dreaded HTML.

Web pages are moved around by something called a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is probably familiar sounding if you’ve ever looked for a specific site address on the internet (example our address http://Jennifer-Wallis.com).

What different types of websites are there?

I was shocked to find out that the world wide web (WWW) was created way back in 1989(!) by a physicist Tim Berners-Lee.  Mind you back then it was a much simpler world, with one choice (and for those around my age group here’s a flash back – a huge, muscle snapping, orange screened word processor).

These days we have nothing but choices. However, they can still be broken down into 2 main groups.

Group A:  Static
Group B:  Dynamic

The static website…

A static or traditional website has pages stored on the server. It’s generally coded in HTML. The site developer can include photos, animations, video etc to jazz it up, but the word static refers to it’s displaying technique of all the same information to all visitors.

If you create a static website you would perform updates only periodically, however, it is a manual process to edit your site’s content.

In this visual age, your visitors may or may not like this format, as they are not able to control any of the information that they are being fed. Generally, what they see is what they get. As a site developer, you will be much happier in this world if you have at least basic to medium website design skills and good software.

So, what all this amounts to is that, with the static website, visitors are not able to control what information they receive and must instead settle for whatever content the website owner has decided to offer at that time. For the builder the content never changes unless you load a new page or change a page yourself by uploading a new page to your web server.

The dynamic website…

The more modern day creation is the dynamic website.

A dynamic website is great because it accommodates automation. It’s built to be easier to maintain, update, expand and it customizes itself automatically based on what-ever a user or reader asks of it. For example, a dynamic website can be set to show all the new articles for today’s date.

Classic examples of dynamic websites…

There are programmer instructed websites that tell the server how to build a page through data base type scripts and viewer instructed websites which ask the web page to change its own content without having to reload or load a new page. Programmers build the page by instructions provided by the programmer. Viewers create pages by instructions provided off of the web browser.  Examples are:

• Drop down menus
• Alert boxes
• Floating images
•  Shopping carts
• Online banking
• Membership sites
• Music/Video
• Blogs

Blogs – a dynamic website.

Blogging was thought to have started in the 1990’s by a forward thinking college student.  Blogs gained rapid popularity, so that by the end of the 1990’s they were considered very sophisticated and were met with the birth of various blog or web hosting services. (If you are interested in learning how to choose the best blog host server check out one of my other articles on blogging and the 4 top questions to ask for the perfect blog host provider!)

A Newbies self-interview – Static or Dynamic Website?

Oh hands down, for ease and performance, go with a dynamic site and pick a blog with integrated host. Of course (as I suggested at the beginning) you need to plan ahead your site requirements. However, if you are interested in the opinion of a fellow newbie, then the blog for its ease and features has taken me out of my techie nightmare and single handedly brought my business out of the closet and online.  

Starting an online business I’ve had occasion to try a lot of different types of sites and “make money online” programs which, for the majority, recommended the newbie start with the static site model. Then one day I became an Alex Jeffrey student and was introduced to the blog.

Now I’m up to make a couple grand a month where before I couldn’t get past the techie side of the business and spent at least a year trying a variety of products and software unsuccessfully.

I credit Blogs and Jeffry’s for taking me out of the dark and put me into the light so to speak. I recommend unequivocally dynamic websites and an easy one to create and manage is the blog with an integrated host.
 

Your invite –

If you want to follow more about what we’ve been learning in regards to blogging, WordPress, or about the things that have worked as we grow our internet business, then you’re invited to engage in our discussions that share (for free) what each of us are doing to get past any of the hurdles we face while growing our online business dreams.

And at this article directory watch for more parts of this article on what I have learned so far about growing an online business / blogs / traffic. Upcoming include “4 ways to pick the top blog host” and “blogging and the search engines”.

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