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Internet and Blogging by
Hari
Posted on Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 17:07 IST (last updated: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 @ 20:32 IST)
I've often wondered: why is a blog so easy to maintain while most personal websites always seems to be left in an unfinished state? You know, those forever "under construction" geocities pages, broken links, messy sidebars and long, verbose paragraphs that are hard to read. I'm sure many people can relate to this. And this is all the more surprising is that the moment you start a blog, you start thinking differently even though a blog is a website - a different kind - but a personal website nonetheless. Yet, the moment I want to create a website I start running into problems including lack of things to write about. An ordinary, static, content-driven website never seems to work out as well as a blog. Let me try and analyse why this is so.
Content doesn't organize itself easily
Content never seems to get itself structured when you start thinking in terms of pages to fill. This is not just a case of "not having something to write about" but more about problems in arranging that content into a website format. When you hand-design a website from scratch, you're often caught in a trap of content versus structure and when you find that your content quite does not fit the traditional website model, it becomes harder to get it down into the form you want. In fact, most hand designed websites (read static HTML coded ones) tend to have longer pages of flowing text without proper navigation or arrangement into separate documents or sections. It's just too much trouble to take care of all those bookmarks and links even with a WYSIWYG editor.
The problem always seems to be: which comes first: the structure or the content? Think about this: You have an empty notebook in front of you with a fixed number of pages. You're told to allot a certain number of pages to each chapter and then to write a novel to exactly fill the notebook to the last page. You are always kept aware of the fact that without filling all those pages, your notebook will appear pretty empty. On the other hand, if you choose to just write on sheets of paper and pick up one when you need it, you forget about how many sheets you need or how you're going to arrange chapters and just write as it flows in you.
Moral of the story: Blogs remove the need for structure by organizing content in its own way and frees you from the task of worrying about how the site should look.
The "static content block" syndrome
Static HTML pages tend to have one big problem. Unless you plan to manually update them often, they're meant to be frozen in time. This means that you cannot just write random snippets into a HTML page without thinking that it would appear silly, out of context or irrelevant when somebody reads it a year, or maybe even two months later. This creates what I call the "static content block syndrome." Business or community websites usually don't have this problem because a company or a corporation does have certain static information which are relevant all the time, like agenda, contact details, site information, products and services and so on (even though this content might be updated regularly, this lends itself more to a structure than a personal website which might or might not have a central focus). Therefore most personal websites often never get off the ground because beyond writing about yourself and running the risk of turning into self-centric monologue, there's often no focus or static content to fill the body and substance of the website.
Solution? Blogs free you from the task of maintaining time-frozen content. Rather they give you a method of writing topical content which seems most logical without too much structure. Hence you focus on updated content rather than static information.
The Home Page roadblock
This is what I think is the biggest problem in building a static website. The home page or an index page. The first question that comes to my mind is: "what on Earth am I going to write on this page?" From personal experience I can tell you that it's rather difficult to solve. Usually "Welcome to so-and-so's website" and a few important links to other sections of the site. This seems rather unsatisfactory and plain. It also tends to sometimes restrains our thinking and capacity to organize other content. What and how much should be on the home page of a personal website? Do you write paragraphs of lengthy text explaining the reason for your existence or do you bloat the page with pretty graphics and family photos? Quite frankly this hurdle is rather difficult to cross when manually building a personal website.
Solution? Blogs don't have or need to have a home page. The content is the home page and the fact that entries are dated and arranged in reverse chronological order means that you don't ever think about any content there being irrelevant or unwanted. After all entries aren't stuck there forever and the content of the home page is ever flowing. The whole mindset is different in this case.
Informality plays a big role
Nobody said that a personal website has to be formal and stiff. Yet, when a static HTML page is designed, you run out of things to write, simply because of being stuck on a different mindset. It's amazing, but with blogs, people simply lose this inhibition and become free-flowing and open. The number of things that you can write about freely on a blog seems to make a surprisingly large list. On the other hand, a personal website seems inhibited, stiff and stuck on no particular theme. HTML pages can be a challenge, especially when the content you have doesn't seem to flow in that particular order you have in mind.
Amazingly even unstructured personal websites don't quite have the same kind of informal ambience that a blog allows. I guess it all boils down to the fact that a personal website somehow needs an "agenda" or a reason to justify its existence. A blog needs none whatsoever - it can be just a random journal.
Finally, consistency, maintenance and update
Even when you've overcome all the problems of writing and uploading a static, content-driven personal website, the problems of maintaining it are so obvious. The question of links, for instance. A blogging tool automatically generates links to content in the form of permalinks. A static website requires you to create links for each page in a sidebar or a menu on the home page. A blogging tool frees you from the worries of formatting every page or post that you write. A personal website requires you to manually format every page you write. Consistent formatting can be a pain when manually writing HTML, even with the CSS. All in all, personal websites are quite difficult to maintain because you always have to fine-tune every aspect of your site. Most modern blogging tools make this a breeze and even free you from the task of writing any HTML or CSS at all by providing pre-built skins.
I can think of many more advantages of blogging over static websites, namely the interactivity, the technical advantages, the community and so on. But that would not be the focus of this article. All I wanted to analyse was why blogs tend to make better personal websites not just for the creator, but also for the people who read it. I guess it explains why blogging is the most popular form of online personal publishing today and why there are so many forever "under construction" pages in geocities.
7 comment(s)
Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 00:23 IST #
Comment by ray (visitor) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 01:17 IST #
Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 08:23 IST #
Comment by thennavan (visitor) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 11:44 IST #
Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 12:03 IST #
Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 20:27 IST #
Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Mar 17, 2006 @ 20:37 IST #