Several times lately I have been asked, What is the difference between a blog and a website? And related, Is a blog a website or something different?
Well to give you an immediate answer, you are reading a blog “post” right now. KeySuccessEdge.com uses WordPress, as do thousands of other websites, for the blog portion of our site. By contrast, our main site runs on HTML, not WordPress.
But all that is under the hood. The big difference is this:
- A blog consists of timely articles called “posts” and usually publishes the latest post at the top. As more posts are written, they roll down and eventually off the home page, although they are always accessible in the blog’s database (unless deleted). Blog posts are usually conversational and may reflect the current thought stream of the writer – whether those thoughts are profound, trivial or in between.
- A website consists generally of less time-sensitive information published on “pages.” For example many of the pages of our main website have been online for more than five years, although we have changed the graphics, headers etc.
WordPress was originally created just for blog posts, and some of the earlier versions were really plain. As more and more people around the world contributed new designs and features to WordPress, someone along the way had the idea that with just a little shift the content which was going into “posts” could just as well go into “pages.” Typically these pages are accessed from a menu across the top of the page or down the side, and they do not “roll off the bottom” as new pages are added because they are “static” pages.
This new development spread like wildfire. According to a recent report, almost 20% of the world’s websites now run on WordPress, and the number grows daily.
WordPress is free, easy to update, and allows thousands of features and add-ons called plugins. But it is still somewhat limited in page structure.
By contrast more traditional website design using HTML code and software like Dreamweaver offers almost unlimited design freedom on every page.
So again, the main difference between a blog and a website is the “more temporary” vs. “more timely” nature of the content, but WordPress and other content management systems can produce both kinds of content on the same site as desired.