At first it was, a blog is a personal journal or space for anyone driven by writing to release their tension or thoughts to the world. But today, because blog publishing engines are crossing the gap between a blog publishing engine and a Content Management System (CMS) by itself…where do we draw the line?
While both are publishing engines per se, CMS are built to be flexible and expandable to do more than publishing. It’s about being able to manage more than webpages. It’s about being able to fit the kitchen sink inside the fridge and the fridge inside your website space. That is the number one reason why many systems become over cluttered in the end but I’ll save that for another time.
By definition, Wikipedia states a blog as:
A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
In bold above, a blog must fulfill 2 characteristics. Besides the two requirements, a blog today is defined by other characteristics like:
- The author (not a webmaster)
- The archives
- The layout (a blog layout still has its clear characteristics)
- The popular posts or commenters
- The readers
- And lastly, the library of content is written with a personal tone.
Through my observation, certain characteristics of a blog are no different than your commercial website today. These blog characteristics are:
- The RSS feed
- The email marketing or newsletter
- The advertisements
- The spammers
- The management system
- The privacy (secure area)
- The tags
Based on what I’ve listed above, a blog comes close to a website but can still be defined by the characteristics it (a blog) only carries. In other words, we can’t consider a blog is a blog by noticing it is running on WordPress, MovableType, TextPattern or any other publishing system for that matter.
However, free blog services like Blogger continues to maintain its utmost basic functionality to provide features only required to blog. Come to think of it, now I can understand why they do not want to have Pages like WordPress. Blogger is a true blog publishing engine.
Question of the day:
When is a blog a blog…to you?
[tags]blog characteristics, blog publishing engine, content management system, difference of blog and website[/tags]
i think you should highlight your corporate blogging post too. :)
I do not think that there will be a set of “standards” for a blog to be a blog. I will say the “intention” of the writer that makes a blog a blog :P
We could judge a writer “intention” through his/her contents and layout; although it would not be 100% accurate as there are some writers that could pretend to be genuine bloggers. But hey, following Gustea’s motto from Rattatoulie (Anyone can cook), Anyone can blog. :)
The writer holds the ultimate decision on what to write in his/her blog, whether we (the readers) will appreciate it or not is another matter :)
I’d have to disagree on the writer makes the blog because if a copywriter starts writing without a commercial tone, it still won’t make the website a blog but a website by itself.
Yes, the content is still king but there are other factors which make it what it should be. :)
True, so you will have to actually see where the writer comes from. :)
If he/she is writing for a gaming website, then no matter which tone he/she is using for the contents, still the site would not become a blog. If he/she owns a personal website, then we will have to judge whether that personal website is blog or other type of websites. :)
Your Method is graed
At first it was, a blog is a personal journal or space for anyone driven by writing to release their tension or thoughts to the world. But today,
Thanks.
Chamara