Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Why I maintain this blog

Basically to get things off my chest. My wide following of visitors seem to be interested in what I post and, hopefully, find some interesting information on people and services that I comment on.

As you will see if you take the trouble to look around at some of the posts on this blog the subject matter is very wide and is not restricted to a particular topic. Unlike many blogs and websites this blog does not focus on a particular agenda such as the promotion of a political ideology, discussion of a particular technology or certainly not as a means to discredit an individual that I disagree with.

The difference between a Blog and a Website.


A blog is essentially a chronological account with the most recent post appearing first when the site is accessed. In this case that post becomes the "Home" page of the blog. With a "website" you can choose a "home" page.

The navigation of a blog is mainly via a calendar list of posts. A Website would have to have a specially designed menu system. As such the blog will display the last item that the author has posted to the blog. This may not be the intention of the owner of the blog.

A blog is generally easier to maintain as all the "overhead" is taken care of by the blogging software. If you run your own design of website you are responsible for not only the HTML of the pages but also the upload and organisation of the files on an Internet server. It is far easier to maintain a user feedback mechanism in the way of comments using a blog as the moderation and handling of those comments is taken care of by the blogging software. If you have just an email link on your website you will have to administer that separately from the blog. While it is possible to include a comment facility on a website, it is no trivial task. Typically the communication portal outside the blogging environment is a prime target for hackers and you will find that most of your time will be spent dealing with blog spam. However, some blogging software such as Wordpress, suffers from the same problems with respect to spam.

Using a blog or website to discredit. 


While this can be done there are far better ways of using the Internet to make your point. In the days of Social Media there are many ways to post vitriol about someone that you have an issue.

As most of the population spend many of their waking hours on-line using Social Media, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter would be the obvious choice for such an attack. Donald Trump makes a lot of capital using his Twitter account. The only problem with these platforms is that you have to be famous in the first place for people to follow you and to make your their friends. However, this is where the majority of the action is on-line these days and the users of such platforms are not likely to follow blogs or visit random websites. Sure, these users will make the odd Internet search (often for their own names or for people that they know), but the major source of information and news is from the "new normal" of Social Media. Not that a blog is not part of the Social Media mix, it is just one that requires the average Internet user more effort to participate in.

and there is You Tube.


Another form of Social Media that seems to be popular these days.

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