(Updated)
I don’t think this is a radically new idea: personal websites are so 20th century – Blogs bring them to life, and they are easier to set up. As Don Dodge says, “Blogs are two way, in fact many way, communication where the readers create a conversation by leaving comments, trackbacks, and links. Web sites don’t lend themselves to leaving comments and starting a conversation.”
I think for most individuals a blog offers more power, flexibility, ability for self-expression and dialogue, than a static website. There are a few tricks, however, if you feel the need to have a permanent front-page. Several blog-platforms allow for “sticky posts”. Create only one sticky post, this will always stay at the top, i.e it can become your “static” home page. Smart use of titles, icons, graphics with URL’s in the sticky post, surrounded by categories, lists in the sidebars can turn the “sticky” into the point of entry for several parts of your blog – a’la traditional websites.
Some blog-platforms (e.g. Blogware by Blogharbor, the one I use) also cater for creating classic, static Web pages, allow you to FTP content up to your site, have photo albums ..etc. The static pages don’t automatically become part of your blog categories or your main page, giving you the freedom of freely mix and match with the blog. You could use the static page as your homepage (like the sticky described above) ,or you could call it from a link in a blog post – making sure that’s the only way to access it, someone cannot stumble upon the standalone page without reading the post.
The static page, the sticky post, or badges on your sidebar could also become the launching pad to a personal wiki (SocialText and JotSpot both offer free personal versions) , to your documents in Writely, or to any number of Web 2.0 app’s. It doesn’t matter that all these services are hosted on different servers by different companies, you can bring them all together on your launchpad page.
I recently wrote about using wiki’s to create an Instant Intranet for companies – if you have any projects that require collaboration with others, you can do the same, making it part of your static page.
With all these tools available, who needs a traditional web-page?
Related posts:
Update (3/22): Apparently not just personal sites: Steve Rubel reports Another Company Goes Blog Only
Tags: blogs, blogging, website, homepage, static website, blog as website, intranet, wiki, collaboration, web 2.0, jotspot, socialtext, writely, blogware, blogharbor
Don may say it is two way but couple of times I left comments he did not bother to respond. In contrast Scoble also at Microsoft has a thriving multi-way conversation thread on his blog…many anti-MS comments …
Oh, well, I guess that means the technology offers two-way communication … whether one takes advantage or not is a different question. Hey, you should be sleeping, it’s late (should I say early?) in Florida 🙂
I need a static web site because sometimes my recent posts do not provide an accurate / brief look for a random person at who I am. Sticky posts address this half way.
Ben, I read your static site and think it plays very well together with the blog. Static pages are the Welcome Center, from which visitors go to different directions, either to other static ones, or the dynamically changing content (blog, wiki ..etc.).
Incidentally, I could do most of this all withing my blogware platform, but it really does not matter how many different packages/sites you use, they can seemlessly be mashed together.
For companies, organizations there will likely be more static pages, but my whole point was that for individuals static pages only (i.e. the traditional website) just won’t cut it.
If you only had your regular homepage , I’d look at it, say, wow, interesting, than move on, never to look back. Your blog got me hooked though, and I feel I am geeting to know you, although we’ve never met. The static page is a window, and we all know about “window-dressing”. Through the ongoing dialogue (blog), the real person comes through and that’s why it’s so immensely valuable.
Watching wetpaint Dry 🙂
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