So you’re looking to start a Web site. Perhaps you’ve been watching late night TV again and Don Lapre has you dead-set convinced on making millions placing tiny classified ads. Then you remembered you own a computer which means monetizing content another way, so ol’ Don gets put onto the back burner. This leaves us with one little problem, deciding on a Web site or a blog?

Which is better – a blog or a Web site?

Technically speaking, this is like asking if it’s possible to drive car or a truck. They both drive, you just have to decide whether or not you’re hauling stuff or not? With a static Web site, the big challenge is keeping it all straight. Which directory is going to house your CSS files, images, page files, etc. is kind of a big deal. The first idea most people have is to toss everything into a single bulk directory. That works, until you’re trying to find something later. Best to keep the directories up to date, backed up off site and current. The idea of keeping the contents within them separate, should go without saying.

Photo by Annie Mole

With a blog, things are a little less black and white. There are various content management systems to consider, theming options and tons of add-ons that will help to extend the blog’s overall functionality. It’s pretty cool stuff. Blogs are great because everything is basically going to be sorted for you. You may have some leeway on where scripts go or which directory is used for images, but the rest of it will generally be taken care of.

Then there is the issue of speed. Unless you have a caching scenario setup for a blog, it’s not going to be as fast as a static website. Even with someone not taking full advantage of their CSS files for image handling, using old school img src tags, the static site is less likely to have speed issues. Why? The lack of a database call with each page load of course.

When to use which?

If your goal is written or video content, blogs are a great way to go. I recommend looking into caching add-ons to keep the speed up as much as possible, since this basically creates a static version of the blog page to load. If instead however, you’re looking at creating a site that will likely go unchanged, perhaps hosting a small store front or something else not being altered on a regular basis, then using a static Web site will likely make the most sense for you.