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Friday, June 04, 2010

Website or Blog?

I was going to upload my panel notes from WisCon 34 to my website last night, but it's been so long since I've done anything to my website that I've forgotten how to embed internal page links. I'll have to try it again tonight. But that made me wonder this morning as I was driving to work what's more effective for authors: websites or blogs. To me, websites are places I go to for static information, such as if I want to check the author's list of works or learn more about him/her. Blogs are easier to update and are more interactive. I personally visit more blogs on a daily basis than I do author websites, which I only check out if I have a specific question. And while I'm not planning to ditch my website, I do like that Blogger now allows me to put up separate pages on my blog, which I use for my bio and list of sales. (At some point, I intend to move my links from the sidebar onto their own page.) I'm even thinking of reviving my LiveJournal blog, since it seems that a fair amount of people in the SF community use that instead of Blogger. Maybe if I can sync up my blogs I can actually maintain two at once. So I'd like to hear your opinions: are you more interested in an author's website or blog? Does it make a difference to you if the author is published or not? (I go to more published authors' websites but read more unpublished writers' blogs.) Do you maintain a website, blog, or both?
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5 comments:

  1. Ted Cross6/04/2010 1:03 PM

    I like blogs better. I like Blogger rather than others like LiveJournal, because it seems easier to 'follow' each other. It may be possible on the other sites, but I never see the options on the sites I visit.

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  2. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan6/04/2010 1:06 PM

    Hi, Ted! I don't think I've seen you here before.

    I agree with you about Blogger over LiveJournal; I started out on Blogger because my friends were using it. It seems easier to use than LJ, though that could be because I have more experience with it.

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  3. Maria Zannini6/04/2010 2:56 PM

    Oh fine, Ted. Now you're seeing other women. LOL!

    Just kidding.

    Sandra: I much prefer blogs. Like you've noted, the information is generally static on websites. And now that Blogger has pages, I can do a lot of what was on my website on the blog.

    I lost my domain name recently and I thought it would hurt me, but in truth, most people visit the blog. So what am I losing? :nothing it seems:

    I've never been a big fan of LJ. It just doesn't look businesslike enough for me.

    Though if I could do things over, I wish I could have started with Wordpress. It seems a lot more customizable than Blogger and there are lots of templates available for it.

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  4. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan6/04/2010 3:13 PM

    Maria, one good thing about having a website is that I can have extra e-mail addresses through it. Not that you can't get free e-mail addresses, but it is pretty cool to have e-mail sent to sandraulbrich.com

    As for Blogger templates, I found my current one by Googling "free Blogger templates." I came up with a website full of them.

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  5. Barbara Ann Wright6/04/2010 3:19 PM

    I use both, but I'm with you on checking blogs more often than websites.

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