Site? Shop? or Blog?
Apr 7th, 2011 by Jenn
Site? Shop? Or Blog? By Jennifer Walling
It can be confusing to figure out what sort of site you want on the net, when there are so many different types of sites. How about we look at a few and learn about what they are and how they and can be used.
A regular website is made up of web pages. Static pages that remain the same unless you change them offline and re-upload them. Though this type of site can be hard to find in this day and age, it is still the most basic sort of site you can have. Most of the websites you see and probably want yours to be like, are actually dynamic pages managed through some sort of Content Management System (CMS). They are managed as a whole site, versus just some pages.
Shops are basically cartware used to sell items. These can be freestanding ones you host on your site, or they can be hosted elsewhere. Carts hosted elsewhere can be hosted through their own cart system such as 1ShoppingCart, or hosted through a group site such as http://etsy.com or http://artfire.com.
Carts can also be POD (Print On Demand) sites such as http://zazzle.com, http://cafepress.com, http://lulu.com, or even http://imagekind.com. These sites allow you to upload your own content and images and create products that are sold through the store. POD stores do take a percentage of the sale price for providing the raw materials, shipping and the processing of sales transactions.
There are also specialized styles of sites geared toward artists or communities. These would include BB’s (bulletin boards) and galleries. These can also be hosted on your own site or elsewhere.
Blogs originally began as a way to serve up and share links to other content on the web. Think of it as the first version of Twitter. The posts were short, and mainly consisted of see this link for this type of information as a post. They evolved next into online diaries, with people documenting their lives like in a real diary, but in a far more public way. Next they morphed into a version of CMS, allowing users can to take advantage of the static pages and posting abilities to manage the site content, making it dynamic, flexible and fresh!
