The Blog Structure vs Traditional Web Design

If you plan to design a web site, it's important to plan early what sort of design you want to implement. The most appropriate structure is influenced by many different questions:

Is the site an "artistic" or creative expression, or is it straightforward and informational?
How frequently will you be updating your content?
Who is your audience, and how do you want to affect them?

This may sound obvious, but I'm amazed at the number of people who endeavor to create a web site with little forethought into what effect they're trying to create. When it comes to blogging, I would break the possibilities into three main categories.

Traditional Web Design

As I mentioned in the last section, the traditional web design model is in some ways similar to a book. The main (home) page references the primary topics (which could be considered chapter headings) and those pages are further broken down where needed. The content tends to be fairly static. Of course sections get updated and expanded, but the act is akin to editing and adding chapters to a large book. One last thing to note, very little detail appears on the homepage. Usually one has to venture out to the subsections to read any detail.

The traditional web design is good for a site that is not going to be updated frequently. If you envision going weeks or months without changing your website, you obviously don't want to setup a blog.

My own website originally followed this structure. (It now qualifies as a hybrid, described below.) You are currently reading a section of an article, stored in the "writing" directory of the larger site.

Blog Structure

A blog isn't intended to be "navigated" like a traditional web site. The "meat" is put on the top of the front page, just like the headline of the daily newspaper. Items are generally listed in order of their release date. Newer items are on top, slowly transitioning to the middle and then bottom of the page as they are replaced with even newer items.

Sometimes large web logs can be broken into categories. Each new item is assigned a category, and if the readers want, they can sort the information to view only the news pertaining to their categories of interest. Slashdot works this way. If you only care about articles pertaining to Apple you can click on a link in the sidebar to view the Apple section of Slashdot.

If your web site is intended to dedicated to news items, you may decide upon a pure blog design. Many of the Apple news sites more or less follow this model.

Hybrid Design

I chose a hybrid between the two designs for my website. I originally spent a large amount of time arranging a body of "content" for my site, and it is neatly arranged into the main categories of my life. I've got a photography section, a movies section, recipes in the cooking section, a page for contact information, etc. This lent to a traditional web design, but I also wanted to go further. I wanted to try to attract an audience—people who would bookmark the homepage and return on occasion. These would hopefully evolve into people who would become interested in my work and explore the other sections of the website.

The solution was easy: (in fact, Wil Wheaton does this on his site) I put the main navigation categories on the left side of the screen, and I dedicated the main portion of the window to an ongoing weblog.

Next section: Approaches to Blogging Applications

Page last modified 11/01/2003 23:06