Plan Your Website & Why I Prefer Static Websites
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Why I Prefer Static Websites to Blogs
Blog vs Static Website [Video]
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
After registering a domain name for your website, the next thing to do is to plan your website. Carefully planning your website before you create it will save you a lot of work. If you make a diligent plan, you will not need a major redesign of your website soon after launching it. Sometimes you may find that you need to redesign after creating only five pages of your website.
I usually consider three things before creating a website.
Should I Create a Static Website or Blog?
The first thing to consider when planning your website is to decide what type of website you want to create. "The topic I want to create a website for will it be better if I created a static website or a blog for it?" is the question you should ask yourself.
Static websites are best suited to tutorial or step-by-step kind of sites while blogs are best for sharing personal experiences and personal opinions about current and trending issues. Blogs can also be used to promote your existing static website. So if you are planning the surfing guru kind of website, you are better off creating a static website that contains lots of useful information about surfing first. When you start getting a lot of web traffic to that website, you can then create a blog where you will write about your day-to-day surfing activities to engage your readers more. At this time, you already have dedicated visitors you can direct to your blog from the first day of launching the blog. This way, you have an initial readership you would not have had if you had created the blog first.
You really need to consider whether the information you want to put out on the web is blog-friendly before rushing to create one.
The following reasons are why I would always prefer static websites to blogs. You should consider these too before creating a blog.
Blogging is not a 2 hours/day job
Blogs are being touted as easy to start up and that you only need to work 2 hours a day on it. Yes, you can set up a blog in a few minutes and write your first post in no time but that's not where it ends. After your first post what next?
You still have to spend hours and hours:
- Marketing each blog post like it is a different website so that people can come and read it, link to you, tweet it, leave comments etc.
- Churning out blog posts as often as you take a shower.
- Replying to every comment on your blog to maintain your blog community and to show that you appreciate the people who take time to comment on your blog.
- Getting large followers in the Social Media. With no social proof on your blog, it is looked down upon as a ghost country.
If you take these into consideration, blogging successfully is worse than a day job in my opinion. In a day job you work for about 8 hours a day and that's it. When you are working for yourself (blogging) you run the risk of spending all your waking moments in front of the computer. I would rather go back to my globe-trotting job than be at home and not be accessible to my family.
On the contrary, creating a website takes a lot of time at the beginning but once it is done, you only make updates to it once in a while. You spend more time helping people that contact you directly via your website, advertising and promoting your website while it makes its way up the search engine ladder.
If you are like me (a wife and mum of two and counting), you will know that we only have so many hours in a day left to work on our websites. This time is simply not enough to think about the next blog post, reply to comments on your blog post, reply to tweets and Facebook messages.
I am not saying that people should not be present in the social media; I am saying that with blogging, the risk of these social media taking over our life is very high.
You have to have social proof to be a respected blogger
If you are a blogger and you do not get an average of 30 comments per blog post, thousands of twitter followers and Facebook fans, those who have this social proof look down on you like you do not know what you are doing. Some bloggers even tell people not to put up their Facebook fans on their blog if the number is low. Tell me, how can you get more Likes if you don't tell people that you have a Facebook page? Even if you don't display your number of Likes, people will see that when they arrive on the Facebook page anyway.
There should be room for new comers too. Some bloggers say they can only reciprocate comments if they like your blog. It should not be so. Sometimes we do things to encourage people who are just starting out. Sometimes, I come across a very good article with no comments and I really pity the blog owner.
All these make me think that blogging is fast becoming an exclusive club of self-proclaimed celebrities.
It should not be about huge numbers of followers, it should be about what you have to give your readers. In this day and age when you can pay for Facebook Likes, tribe for comments, and beat the system with automated tools, beats me why some people make us believe that getting all these huge numbers equates to being the best in their niche.
I like being in control of where I put things on my website
In static websites, information is organised by content and are easily referenced through the navigation menus you find on the website. I can choose where I want to put any information on my website; the left or the right navigation bar, the footer or even an extra division anywhere on the website. This, I believe, improves the usability of my website. When my website visitors need any information they saw on my static website, they trust they can come back at any time and see it in the same place.
The pages of a blog are dynamic: you can create categories and place your blog posts in them as you deem fit. But your website visitor may have to dig deep to find a particular post. Sometimes even using the blog's search engine does not help. You can create static pages on a blog or make a blog look like a static website but you need a good knowledge of HTML and CSS to be able to do that. The fact that the blog template was created by another person makes it difficult to edit the templates without breaking something.
So most bloggers use the default template or at best create static pages that are placed at the top of the blog and you have to be careful how many of them you create else your blog looks cluttered.
Bloggers say there's a plug-in for everything you want to add to the blog. I always wonder: what if the plug-in does not fit where I want it? Yes, you can customize most of the plug-ins but there is still a limit to the changes you can make else the plug-in won't work.
Websites are Timeless While Blogs Have an Expiry Date
In a blog or web log, the blog entries or posts are arranged in chronological order according to the post dates. Because of this, blog owners are always under some kind of pressure to update their blogs with new blog posts. If you are a blog owner, your visitors expect you to update your blog regularly, if not you will lose them. It does not look good for a visitor to arrive on your blog and see that the latest post was a month ago.
For this reason, a lot of bloggers churn out mediocre posts and it is so obvious that these were written in a hurry because you see lots of spelling errors. Some even spin their own posts (rewrite an old post by rephrasing it) and re-post it so that they can meet up with the 5-posts-a-week goal they set for themselves.
I believe in quality not quantity. I don't care if a website has only 10 pages of content. As long as the content is well-written and up-to-date, I will visit that website whenever I need the information it has to offer. I don't care if a blogger posts daily on his or her blog, I may only come by once a month because I know that I would not have missed much anyway as two thirds on the posts are repeats of old posts.
In static websites, you can update information you have already published as these change. You may not update a static website for a long time and continue to get visitors as long as the information on it is still relevant.
Some blog owners, in their bid to make their posts timeless, remove the date stamps on their blogs altogether because it is impossible to change these dates. But the date in the comments will still show when the blog post was written.
Recently, I read where some blog owners are asking Google if they can choose to remove the date snippet that Google puts on the SERPs for blogs. The bloggers were concerned that when people see a date from 1 year ago, they are unlikely to click on the result because the content may be out-dated.
Google adds the date snippet to the search engine results description if it sees a date anywhere on that webpage or blog. For blogs, this is inevitable because there will always be a date somewhere on the page. Even if the post date is taken off, there are dates in the comments. So sorry bloggers, if you don't want the date snippet, create a static website.
This is to show you that blogging is not as easy as you may be led to believe. The pressure is just too much.
I am afraid I will run out of ideas on things to write about
With blogs I always wonder: This blogger is providing good content now but what if he or she runs out of ideas on things to write about? What will happen? There will be no more posts and no more readers, I guess and that's it. Yes, some blogs can become so successful that after sometime, the guest posts you get will be able to keep the blog alive but how many blogs are that successful and how many fell by the wayside because the owner ran out of steam?
Yes, some bloggers overcome this aspect by re-phrasing and publishing old posts but I don't want to do that.
But with static websites, sometimes all you need is to reposition some icons on the main column of your homepage and your visitors will see a fresh page. This is so that you do not bore your visitors by leaving the same old page for many years. If you use a lot of pictures on your website, you can place new and more exciting pictures from time to time so that your visitors will know that you are still working hard to give them the best browsing experience and that's it.
I am not saying that you should create your static website and walk away. But in some website niches, the information is still relevant for years so why change your content when the facts have not changed? For my food recipes website, what I do from time is re-read the content from time to time to see if there's a better way to present the information.
I do NOT understand how most blogs make money
Whenever I come by a blog about making money, the only information I take away is that the money is in the "list". So what they advise that we do is to create a blog, collect e-mail addresses and send sales-pitched mails to our subscribers so that they keep coming back and hopefully they will buy something. And you think that's easy? I don't think so.
I am not saying that other means of making money online are easy but the possibility are medium to high.
With the amount of unopened newsletters in my mailbox, I wonder if people are actually reading and responding to these mails. When I want to buy something, I usually go to my favourite sites and buy it, I don't buy through newsletters. Infact, I don't rely on newsletters or RSS feeds to visit blogs, I have days I visit these websites to see what they post for the week and maybe I will discover other websites by reading the comments but that's it.
One way I guess some bloggers really make money is by offering courses or selling ebooks that will expose how they make money but you have to command some respect in the blogosphere to actually get people falling over themselves to pay for such courses or ebooks.
Generally, most of the premium templates, software or tools being sold on most blogs are one-off stuff that people buy once in a lifetime. It is not like consumables you use up and come back for more. Some of the tools are so expensive that you and I cannot afford it. So who buys these things? And are these bloggers really making any money at all?
When I come by a static website and I see Adsense ads, yes, that's an obvious way by which the owner wants to make money and sometimes, a good ad will raise your curiosity and you click to find out what the advertiser has to offer.
Most bloggers who find it hard earning with the "list" are now putting Adsense ads on their blogs as another option. So there you go!
I really love this video by the Queen of making money online, Lisa Irby. She started off explaining why some bloggers do not make money with their blogs but also touched a lot on the advantages of static websites over blogs.
I call it the World Wide Web Fight 2011 (WWWF 2011)
Enjoy the video but don't forget to read the rest of the things I consider before creating a website.
So to summarize this blog vs static website duel, I don't hate blogs or bloggers. There are actually a lot of bloggers that I follow and comment on their posts. I am just saying that you should think about these things before you jump in thinking that you must create a blog whether it fits your website topic or not. Please don't create a blog because it is in vogue.
The only time a blog beats a static website is if you want to create a news site. Blogs get indexed almost as soon as you publish your post and you need to get your news out there so that people coming via the search engines can find and read your posts before the news goes stale.
But for a tutorial or step-by-step-guide kind of sites? No way!
How to Layout My Website
The second thing I consider when planning my website, is how best to present the information to my site visitors so they can easily find what they are looking for. This is called layout. How can you present the information on your website so that your visitors will find what they need without having to dig around for it? If you make your visitors think when they arrive on your website, the next thing they will do is LEAVE.
OK, you just arrived at a website from a search engine. What do you want to see on the first webpage and where do you want to see it? You should implement the answer to this question when creating your own website. Remember that an average person does not have the patience or the time to read through a website. What we do is scan a website and once we do not find what we are looking for, where we want to find it, we hit the back button on our browser and go to the next website on the search results page.
With this in mind, draw out a layout of the pages of your website and make notes of what would be where. Remember your layout should please your audience rather than you. You may create a website that you are very happy with but if your potential visitors do not like it, you will not get visitors that will stay long enough to discover the wonderful information that you have on the website. Even when people stumble upon your website, they will not be coming back neither will they recommend your website to anybody.
So consider the following when planning the layout of your website:
- What will be in the header?
- Do I need a horizontal navigation bar just below the header? What links should be there?
- Do I need two side-navigation columns; one on either side of the main column? Or just one side bar?
- What width will my website have? What width will the navigation columns and the main column have?
If you will integrate Adsense on your website, you should check out the widths of the Adsense ads you plan to use before choosing the widths of where you will place them on your website. For example, if you want to integrate the 160X600px sky scraper ad in the left navigation bar of your website, make sure your left navigation bar has a minimum width of 160px.
With CSS, you can easily change the layout of your website but that's extra work. Save yourself some valuable time by planning the layout of your website before you create it.
What Colors to Use on My Website
When I was planning to create my Food Recipes website, I knew straight away that I will use warm colors on it. You don't want to see dark colors when you are reading about food, do you?
But I did not know the exact colors neither did I know their hex color codes. Then I found this website. I like the way the hex colors and their codes are presented on the website. Once you are there, just click on a group of colors and you will see all the shades of the color at a glance. That really makes it easy to choose colors for your website, in my opinion.
When creating this website, I knew is will look better in cool colors, you know, shades of blues and grays and I chose accordingly. You want to learn in a cool environment, don't you? I am happy with the rest of the colors but I have not found the perfect background color … yet! I am open to suggestions ;)
Whatever color you choose, make the hyperlinks in the content of your website blue. The hex code for that is #0000FF. This is the traditional color for hyperlinks and an average website visitor associates this color with a hyperlink.
If your website audience are mostly webmasters, they may figure out which are hyperlinks on your website even if you do not use this color. But if your website caters to wide demographics of people of all ages and backgrounds as is the case with a travel website, then it is better to use the traditional color for hyperlinks to improve the usability of your website.
The links in your navigation column can be any color because most people know that they can use those to go to other pages of your website.
Tip: While browsing the web and you see a color you like on any website or blog, you can use the Firefox add-on ColorZilla to find out the hex code of that color.
