Blog or Static Website

blog A static website is a series of pages linked together in a controlled fashion.

"Static" simply means the data/pages are displayed to the user exactly as they are stored on the web server. The site organization/structure is manually controlled by HTML and CSS. This is a static website you're reading now.

A blog is a special kind of website. Blogs are made up of a series of "posts" that are dated and often categorized. Blogs are dynamic, which means the pages are rendered by a script.

For example, you can display/sort a blog's content by date or category. Because blogs are dynamic, the content can be displayed in a number of different ways.

The other main differences are...

Blogs have a section for comments
Blogs can be setup very quickly with no programming skills or software required. There's a built-in WYSIWYG editor.
Websites require either hand-coding (HTML and CSS) or some kind of software/editor or web template. (I use Dreamweaver for this static website.) You may also need to publish the content to the Web using a separate (FTP) client

If you go to my blog, you'll notice that the homepage always shows the most recent content (posts).

The latest posts are automatically rendered every time the page loads. I didn't have to physically add the latest posts to the page. This is an example of dynamically generated content.

If you wanted to do this same thing with a static website, you'd have to manually add your latest content to your homepage using your software or by editing the code directly.

WordPress for Static and Dynamic Content

You can actually use WordPress to get the best of both worlds. Even though the platform is primarily associated with blogging (dynamically generated content), you can use it to build a more static layout as well. It will just take some modifications.

I developed a WordPress guide (tutorial) that shows you how to accomplish this.

Blogs are Easier to Setup, But...

Just because blogs are easier to setup, it doesn't mean that's the one you should choose. Many people make the mistake of choosing a blog when they really need a website or a combination of both (WordPress).

Watch the video below to learn more about the differences.

Now that you understand more about how blogs and websites are organized, hopefully you can make a more educated decision on what's best for your needs.

Learn more about how to register your own domain and create your website here.

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