Web logs, web journals, blogs; whatever you want to call them, however much you hate them or like them blogs have become a significant part of the fabric that makes up the World Wide Web. For months now I’ve been using popular blogging software (MovableType) on the Short Family Web Site. I’ve found having a blog isn’t the “big deal” about blogs. The big deal is having the ability to quickly, efficiently add content to a web site. Blogging software also allows you to inform people that you have updated your site through e-mail notifications, pinging other web sites, and trackbacks.

The true essence of a blog is that the blog becomes the entire web site. That’s not the case at the Short Family Web Site; Our Life is merely a section of the Short Family Web Site that allows us to round out our content offerings with up-to-date topics that might not fit in any of the other sections of the web site.

Blogging as merely a part of a web site has been a very successful venture for the Short Family. It has helped turn our web site into more than just a personal web site with lots of content. It has transformed our web site into a heavy hitting power house that gets updated frequently and draws traffic in to the site all on its own without much effort from us. Our traffic has climbed dramatically since November 2003 when we first launched our blog as a section of our web site.

As mentioned earlier the traditional blog is usually THE web site, not a section of a web site. There are two reasons we made our family’s blog into a section of the web site and not transform the web site into a blog or build another web site as just a blog.

The first reason was obvious; the site was built and well established among other web sites on the World Wide Web. Integrating a blog into the site was easier and more cost effective than spinning off another site as our blog or converting the entire web site over to a blog (which was a possible plan at one point).

The second reason was when I was adding the blog onto the site I wasn’t sure if it would really take off. It did and Our Life is now one of the most trafficked sections of our family web site. I would have hated to have integrated all of our content into a blogging system, created all of the 301 redirects necessary to keep search engines from thinking we have duplicate content and getting visitors to the “new” pages, and reformat the entire web site into something that wasn’t as pure in design as the existing web site if it wasn’t going to be a success.

However, most blog software isn’t designed to function inside a directory (in theory), it can with no problems but most blogging software is bundled with utilities that allow you to manage just about every aspect of the site from a simple web interface. There is no problem with blogs being the web site. However, there is no reason why you can’t develop tons of content and then add-in a blog amongst that content.

Let’s face it, blogs in the form they are implemented today create traditionally ugly things that make content harder to find unless you’ve found it via a search engine. Going to most traditional blog home pages leaves me simply lost among small text and hundreds if not thousands of links. But that’s what blogs do, link to other sites. But the links aren’t just there on the page, the links are embedded in content and shed light on what the writer is discussing with his or her audience. Why create a site full of links and content when you can create a site full of content with links?

That’s why the Short Family Web Site has its blog as a section of the site. It polishes the various sections off and provides for the addition of semi off topic content and on topic family news. If you’re struggling with your web site having many sections with not a lot of content then I suggest you add a blog with multiple categories to aid you in organizing your site better.

Frequently updated blogs can become quite large as a site. Frequently updated blogs as a section of a web site create an even bigger web site filled width tons of content (and content about its content if you so choose). Sure having two or three web sites is nice for some people and if you have a web site or blog that varies in content so much that you need to break up your web site into various other web sites then having multiple web sites is justified. But there is no reason to build another site when you can add-on to your existing web site and still remain within the subject area your web site covers. Before you go out shopping for a new domain name consider using the one you already have.