What is The Difference Between A Website And A Blog

As a website person, I often get asked this question “What is the difference between a Website and a Blog?” and this got me into a brief thought, and then I rushed off to google to find out what both is outside whatever I might have known from my daily experience working with both websites and blogs.

If I’m asked my own personal opinion, a website and a blog are two sides of the same coin, with one looking a bit different from the other and yet part of the whole. I will not dwell on technicalities but will try to answer the question in a plain language that we all can understand. First, to understand the difference, I think the first thing is to know what both of them are and from there we can deduce the difference and similarities between both.

So What is a website?

According to a definition from Wikipedia “ a website is a collection of related webpages, including multimedia contents ( images, videos etc ) typically identified with a domain name and stored/published in at least a one web server and accessed via a browser.

Few things are central in the above definition Web pages Webpages are the building blocks of a website without which there won’t be anything called a website. The most prominent websites webpage which is the first point of call for every website is the home page. eg if you try accessing www.doerstechnologies.com.ng you will first land at the homes page which is index.html or .php page.

Then you have other typical webpages  like

• About us,
• Services,
• Blog and Contact

Domain Name

Simply said, Domain name is your website name eg www.doerstechnologies.com.ng or www.rideonnigeria.com or www.wincotechlifts.com I can go on and on.

This is the address your potential customers and other internet searches uses to find your business on the net. Though what a typical human user sees are the names as written in English or any other language, this is not how it’s seen by computers that we human’s use In accessing websites as computers uses IP Addresses which are series of numbers instead of plain English that we all see.

Web server According to Wikipedia a web server 

Refers to a server software ( eg Apache HTTP or Microsoft ISS Servers ), or hardware dedicated to running said software, that can serve contents to the World Wide Web. A web server processes incoming network requests over the HTTP protocol (and several other related protocols) Read more on web servers here

Browser

The last but not the least is browse. After writing the codes and the rest, you need it to display to your target audience and the wider worldwide web. That’s the job of a browser which is simply a software application that retrieves, interprets and present your website web pages to the world wide web. Eg Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera  

Read Also – 7 Important Features Every Website Must Have  

So once again websites are a collection of related webpages stored and access via a central location has a domain name and served to the world via a web server. Few things to note about websites

• The basic technology of choice for building websites are HTML, CSS and JS including CSS Frameworks like Bootstraps and Foundation or JS Frameworks like Angular, React and Ember.js
• The primary landing page of a website is usually the “Home page” then you have others like About us, Services and the rest.
• Blogs are normally part of every serious business website as all blogs are websites but not all websites are blogs.
• Websites normally have a formal style of presentation to the audience be it a business website, brand or websites set up for promotional purposes.
• Websites pages are not always/frequently updated
• A typical website ought to have features like FAQ, Client testimonials, Team page, live chat integration and means of feedback through a contact form.

Websites can come in different forms and shape depending on what the owners set out to achieve. It can be static, dynamic or an eCommerce website.  

Read Also – 5 Things to do to make your website more visible to your target audience  

What Is A Blog?

According to Wikipedia “ A blog is a personal website or webpage on which an individual records opinion links to other sites, on a regular basis.”

• Simply said, a blog is a form of a website that’s regularly updated (daily or weekly).
• Blogs are made up of blog posts (articles) that are arranged in a chronological order (ascending or descending) showing authors name and dates posted.
• Unlike websites which contents are usually formal in style and presentation, blog articles (posts) style can be both formal and informal and covering several subject areas from gossips, politics, health, entertainment and sport.

Examples of typical blog sites in Nigeria are  Lindaikeji , Bellanaija , Techcabal and Techpoint In Summary, the difference between a website and a blog is exemplified by what they both represent. Blogsites are

• Built with popular CMS like WordPress (WordPress.com the free version and WordPress.org the paid version) and Blogger (which is owned by Google). You can also blog using platforms like Wix, Tumblr, Medium, Weebly and Ghost.
• Made up of blog posts (articles) that are chronologically arranged by date, authors name, categories and tags
• Blog thrives in the regularity of its content, but most importantly the quality of such helps a great deal in bringing quality traffic and backlinks to your blog, increasing its dwell time and helping your posts rank favourably against its competitors.
• Most blogs contents have informal outlook especially entertainment, gossip and their likes. Some have professional outlooks like niche driven blogs.
• A proper blog should have a comment system to enable its readers to interact with the blog owner and also, an option for its users to share its content on social media.

Websites are

• Built with different technologies including HTML, CSS, JS and the rest plus CMS like WordPress and Joomla
• Made up of related webpages which are either static or dynamic.
• Have mostly a formal outlook in style and presentation.
• Not regularly updated
• The whole essence of a website is to sale the products and services of it’s owner to the website target audience.
• Website pages may have a CTA/newsletter or other forms of collecting users contact details but not a commenting system.

At the end of the day every serious-minded business, brand or professional no matter how small needs a website, not just a website but one with a blog in it. You sell your product and services through your website and show your expertise in your business niche by blogging regularly while creating value doing so.  

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Rutherford Ejimonu

Rutherford Ejimonu is a Digital Marketer, Content analyst, SEO Specialist with many years of experience in the industry. He works with Doers Technologies as their Remote Webmaster, Content Strategies and SEO Specialist.