April 7, 2005

Are blogs the ultimate publishing platform?

I have built quite a number of websites over the years (you can check out some of them on Fruetel.net, most of them are in German though), and recently I am heading more and more towards using blog software as a backbone for the sites. With XyroX, it was a natural choice, as this site was intended to be magazine style, and software like WordPress works very well for that kind of sites. Then I have built hybrid sites, for example my German Insurance Site, which consists of a selfmade skeleton of pages and WordPress for the news section.
So, apart from good content, which is mandatory, what makes a good website?

• Regular updates and growing content
  This is important for repeating visitors as well as search engine. Google seems to love sites that grow, and people like to see something new each time when they return to a site they bookmarked. Blogs are perfekt for that purpose, there is not much that is easier then creating a new post in your blog software’s backend.
• Usability and accessibility
  Blogs are typically lightweight pages that load quick and are easy to navigate. The important search function is usually built in allready and if categories are used for posting there is a good structure for the content. Most blogs do a rather good job at delivering standard compliant HTML, a task where many more powerful CMS systems miserably fail. RSS feeds offer an additional way of accessing the content, and no modern site with regular updates should be without RSS.
• Interaction
  Many people like to speak their minds on the web instead of just consuming information. This is why bulletin boards became so popular. With comments enabled you offer your visitor the opportunity to give feedback on your content. If there is active discussion on your articles, this is another great opportunity to get repeat visitors, as people like to come back and check what others have to say. Also you get a lot of user generated content that way, which is a great way of building your site in a natural way.

So should every website be a blog? Of course not. But every time I now launch a new project, I ask myselft what would be the best platform for doing this. And more often then not, the answer is: Make it a blog!