Websites or Blogs? Which are you using for your niche sites?

Do you prefer to focus on building blogs or websites? My goal is to build a series of niche sites, but I wonder what will be easiest to manage when I have build about 40-50 sites, blogs or websites? Is it better to build sites in general areas or around specific products?

Mike

 

i prefer wordpress blogs for my minisites.

 

Wordpress would be the cheapest, a bunch of free themes. easy to monitize also.

 

When I first started a few years I was into building mini sites, but now I am trying to stay with the times and go towards blogs. Mainly wordpress. A nice custom blog can cost as little as 50 dollars.

 

Blogs of course,it's easier to maintain.

 

depends, it sounds like you would be better off with blogs since they do all the work for you

If it was one site or a couple I would say build a full blown site.

 

Blogs are really easy, and if used correctly can be applied to almost any need.

 

I think if you have the money then you should go with websites and get your own domains. By the way, do you really have 40-50 sites? That's a lot. I have some real hard time maintaining just one blog

 

Go with a blog like wordpress if you post content regularly and need a quick way to write what you want and have it appear on the page. It really all depends on how you want the site to be though because something like Joomla could also work well for you.

 

Comparatively , blogs are easy to maintain / manage . Also , wordpress is easily customizable and there are loads of plugins available for wordpress .

 

I've been launching one blog after another lately (unique domains and all though... not feely hosted). They're quick to setup. Even though I was skeptical for a long time, Wordpress really does make a great CMS for much larger content sites. Even though I'm not done "de-blogging" it, you can see one of my content sites that I just moved to wordpress at www.bizammo.com

When I run non-WP-backed sites, I find it more of a struggle to update... it's the blogging backend that I love much more than blogging itself.

 

I'm a huge wordpress fan. I've used it on more projects than I can count. www.WebDoodlesUSA.com is one that I used it on and avoided having it look bloggy. Although if you look in my sig, that one is just a normal blog.

 

Hello,

I guess it really depends on the type of content and frequency of updates. A have about 20 mini-websites that were developed about three years ago. These were basically "brand" Web sites that contain a mini-product catalog and various tips and articles as well as fishing tournament news.

However, although this works and I drive a steady stream of traffic and online sales to my main eCommerce Web site I am taking a long look at converting these to Blogs.

Or, another option I am looking at is keeping the Web site "shell" so I keep the nav and "look-and-feel" but push the content updates to an integrated Blog of some sort.

This strikes me as a decent hybrid approach but after some testing I can't seem to get the Blog integrated the way I want.

Not to hi-jack this thread, but does anyone know of any good examples that integrate a Blog with a Web site so you get the best of both worlds?

-PRADCO

 

If you use a full featured content management system (Drupal, Mambo, etc.), then you can create a website that is a hybrid blog/website. In my opinion, the only thing that makes a blog a blog is the automated CMS that uses time to organize and display content. Some blog packages are limited to that. But other CMS software lets you do it any way you want ... you can make the home page an auto-generated display of the last 10 or 15 pages. Or you can create a page specifically for that and call it your blog, and put other stuff on the home page.

It is also possible to customize wiki software to create a site - this favors lots of internal linking and breaking the content into smaller, more readable chunks. Most wikis allow a side box that shows the recently created content. Wiki software does not require chaos - using password protection limits who can edit - usually, only me.

Pradco - check out aphrodisiology.com ... does that fit the bill for a hybrid?

 

I think niche sites are easier to maintain if you have 40-50 like you mentioned. Blogs can become a LOT of work if you try to make them truly worthwhile. Especially with comments and fighting comment spam.

I have a mixture of the two. Blogs are nice because they are easier to get started, IMO. So many 'plug and play' type features available.

 

I would suggest Wordpress blog - easy to manage, lots of plug ins and wide support in form of blogs and articles.

 

I second wordpress blog, it comes with a content management system and its free - so you can add pages to make it a website. Second, a blog is easier to rank high on search engine because of RSS feed. You can also customize your wordpress blog by having a custom template, it costs me only $150 for my blog leedominic.com

 

certainly blogs are easier to manege.And for a log u dont need any knowledge of language.But I dont have any blog experince.I have made my personal website(http//www.techiehome.org) using CMS(drupal) ..and Second website(http://www.techiehome.org)is on phpbb.But I have decided that I will add a blog also to my first website.

 

wordpress is the best and you can use a lot of plugins

 

I did not develop mini sites. If you choose site option, i think you should aim to develop a big site. But if your sites will be minimal then i prefer to use wordpress. It is really easy compared to joomla.