What Is The Difference Between A Normal Web Site And One Powered By A Simple CMS Or Weblog?

Forget the word "blog". Erase it from your mind.

Find a name for what Sepp, Chris and Ivan have online and tell me what it is. In your own words.
Thinking "blog" will only limit and restrict your ability to use this type of tools to your advantage.

This is an online publishing press, a mini-(radio) station, a transmission hub for information, news, reporting, networking, and more.

It can be used as a catalogue, as a directory, or as an independent newspaper online. It can be a clearinghouse for ideas from many people and it can be also a shop where people sell the work they do (digital or physical).
The choices are for those who forget the word blog and look at the tool they have in their hands. A highly flexible, non technical, publishing instrument.
Take it from there.
I can tell you that what I do on this site and Communication Agents first prototype sites ARE NOT blogs by any means.

According to Stephen Downes:
"A weblog is a linear list of discrete entries that are dated, displayed in reverse chronological order, and are published to the World Wide Web."

In this respect what I am describing and creating has a weblog on the home page. But please look around the site: it doesn't look like this site ends here, nor that this maybe the most requested page.

Anyway, my point is that a weblog is only a form, or style of communication, it is not a tool, a system, an approach, like I intend to provide to all of you.
Emma,
Candida International can be converted into this positively. This is something that you will need to consider if it is worthwhile doing or if you may like to simply start anew and to gradually add the content from the old site to the new one.

For the sake of shaking any established connotation of blogs I will refer to this tool as a CA mini-station (Communication Agents).

The difference between the Communication Agents tool/serviceand a normal Web site are listed here below:
1) No difference in terms of looks. A CA mini-station looks as professional and slick as any other Web site.

2) No need for a traditional webmaster to maintain it.

3) You can publish directly from your computer.

4) You can use any type of computer to publish (Mac, Linux, PC)

5) There is no HTML or other coding for you to learn

6) Changes you make to the site happen in real-time

7) Content can be easily organized under different categories you define yourself

8) You can easily change, update, add new categories

9) The pages you create are automatically archived chronologically and by category

10) Readers can subscribe to your mini-station and receive each and everyone of your articles in their emails without having to come to your site

11) You have maximum immediacy in publishing anything. From thought to online page it takes as little as 30".

12) Readers can comment and provide public feedback to your articles if you decide so.

13) An effective search engine is already integrated in your mini-station.

14) Traffic and number of visitors to your site are automatically measured at no extra cost.

15) Page titles are automatically set to reflect your content titles for best indexing by major search engines.

16) An RSS feed is integrated in the site allowing individuals to receive your content through newsreader and aggregators.

17) The content you publish can be automatically syndicated to major news syndication services like Syndic8 and Newsisfree which in turn will redistribute to hundreds of sites home pages' news section.

18) Can easily reference other content and articles available online.

19) Can publish images with very little effort. No quality difference with a traditional Web site.

20) Can make site changes and content changes with minimal effort and time. Any page can be edited instantly.

21) Be part of a community of several thousands users utilizing the same technology with success.

22) No need to use FTP or to transfer files manually to your server.

23) Edit and post content even if you are not connected to the Internet

This is an initial list. I think I could go on quite a bit, but I also think that it gives a good initial idea of the differences you were looking for. They are all hidden from a superficial view, while providing a most significant advantage to the communicators behind them.
I hope this further helps you understand what this is all about while providing some useful written notes for all the many others that will follow you with these same questions.
Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: Emma Holister [mailto:Emma@xxxxrs.com]
Sent: mercoledì 11 giugno 2003 11.56
To: Robin Good
Subject: I'm in!!

Hi Robin and Josef, I'm in!

What shall I do to get mine going?

Also, as to the art blog i'd like to do, I don't think that the image size should be a problem, can't we just transform the images to the right size for the blog? If we loose on quality, well, they can visit my site, or contact me or buy some postcards or prints once I get off my arse that is....

I'm very excited about this.

But I still don't really understand the difference with a website in that I don't know how a blog works differently from a site...is it that it's on a different line, that prevents it from having good quality images?

I'm sure my poor brain will get around this confusion at some point.

What interests me of course is that I can have a website without a webmaster, that I can do changes myself whenever I want to.

Could I quite simply change Candida International into a weblog then? That would make my life much easier.

Are weblogs as easy to find on search engines as websites?

Can I keep the C.I address more or less the same? Infact, could I scrap my original website altogether or are websites useful in a way that Blogs can't be?

Love Emma xxx