Ever consider

[mikefulton]

In most respects, the Luminous Landscape website is a blog.  The site doesn't really have the typical look and feel of most blogs, but that's essentially what it is, nevertheless.

Have you, the webmasters, ever considered embracing that idea a bit more closely? 

For example, with most blogs if you want to comment on an article, you do so right there, not in a separate forum.  It adds a greater degree of interactivity and people are more likely to speak up than if they have to find the forum and look for an existing topic about the article in question.

[PeterAit]

Requiring a little effort to respond to an article  is a good thing. If this really minor effort is beyond one's abilities, then perhaps we are better off not hearing from that person.

[mikefulton]

>>Requiring a little effort to respond to an article is a good thing.
>>If this really minor effort is beyond one's abilities, then perhaps
>>we are better off not hearing from that person.

It's not a question of being "beyond one's abilities" to make a post.  The idea here should be to facilitate and ENCOURAGE discussion.  That's done by making it EASIER to participate, not by making it harder.  If we're really better off not hearing from someone in particular, then it's the moderator's option to deal with it.

[PierreVandevenne]

A forum is a much better place for discussion. Blog comments are often one shots and don't facilitate the exchange of ideas. On a forum, you can post fairly long and documented posts, think about other people posts, experiment and go back to them. Keep track of what was said in the past, develop a sense of community among the regulars etc... IMHO, if people are too lazy to look for a topic they want to comment on, their opinion is worthless anyway.

The way I see it, the web site is a multiuser diary that serves as a anchor for a community of valuable contributors. AFAIC, the web site aspect is enjoyable and some times thought provoking, but the real value lies in the forum, the quality of its contributors and its format itself.

[mikefulton]

Pierre, I'm not talking about taking away the forums.  I agree that they are a better place for discussion overall.  But comments have their place too and there's no reason we can't have both.

[Wayne Fox]

In most respects, the Luminous Landscape website is a blog.  The site doesn't really have the typical look and feel of most blogs, but that's essentially what it is, nevertheless.

Have you, the webmasters, ever considered embracing that idea a bit more closely? 

For example, with most blogs if you want to comment on an article, you do so right there, not in a separate forum.  It adds a greater degree of interactivity and people are more likely to speak up than if they have to find the forum and look for an existing topic about the article in question.

I don't see this site as a "blog".  Articles are normally informational and educational, not really random thoughts and opinions like most blogs.

Problem with responding to blog post themselves is it makes the follow up discussions less accessible and isolated. TOP is like this, and I find myself rarely reading through the replies.  Very difficult to follow up on.  IMO for this type of site, having the discussions stay in the forum is much more helpful and appropriate.

[mikefulton]

Wayne, certainly a lot of "blog" sites are exactly what you describe. And unfortunately, the term "blog" has a negative connotation for some people as a result of having wasted time with those sites.

However, I'm not talking about content.  I'm talking about the underlying structure of the site, such as how the pages are laid out and how the menus work, etc.  And from that perspective, there's little difference between this site and those which have the aforementioned random thoughts and opinions.  When I look at this site, I see how it would be easily implemented using something like WordPress.

At any rate, the question isn't really if LL is a "blog" or not, it's if the ability to comment more directly on an article would be a good thing or not.  I must admit, I do prefer message forums like this one, but I just think it's a couple of steps too far removed from the original article.  If people don't like the idea of adding comments, then how about the idea of adding a link into the forums at the bottom of each article?  That is, a link directly into the particular thread discussing that article?  People would still have to register in order to post, but that would make it a bit easier to join the conversation.

[Dave Millier]

What's the difference between a blog and a website?

Not really thought about it that much before but the most obvious feature to me is that Blog software is designed around a quick and easy publishing model first and foremost. It is designed to allow non technical authors the ability to very quickly compose and post their thoughts and for readers to comment directly. It is social media, it is immediate, it is iteractive. In order to make that possible, a blog (typically) is based around a simple content management system. It usually has a basic visual design built from generic templates rather the customised design of websites. It normally has a standardised navigation structure based on a chronological list of postings. It doesn't normally have a complex information architecture with layered menu structures like a website; it relies on keyword metadata to allow topic searches. Navigation is generally linear and date based. Exploring a blog is a bit of a linear process and finding a half remembered article can be pretty difficult given the data based approach. Most blogs look pretty much the same and come with the same tools and features.

Websites, on the other hand are more like cross-referenced books and exploit the power of hyperlinks to the full. They are often designed to look good, and allow flexible custom visual design. Content is normally organised in a deliberate topic based tree structure and each site's information architecture is unique and custom designed for the audience. With the exception of a what's new page, is not normally date ordered, rather it is topic based. The information flow goes from the author to the reader, not the other way around. It is not social media. Social media capability is usually done through auxiliary parts of the site like this forum.

Content wise, a blog and a website can cover pretty much the same material but blogs tend (but are not limited to) being short diary like topical opinion and discussion rather than lengthy long lasting reference material - which is more typical of websites. Website also tend to contain much more detailed treatments of often care interwoven content spread over many pages.

To my mind, LuLa is nothing like a typical blog, although it does contain some articles that might be considered the topical musings of the owner, this is not the main material. The majority is quite heavy technical or didactic content. These things are not black and white, there is always some crossover but I can't say I really follow your "Lula is a blog thesis" - that would make all websites blogs.

Dave

[mikefulton]

What's the difference between a blog and a website?

That's the wrong question and the wrong comparison.  It's like asking what's the difference between a convertable and a vehicle?  All blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs.

Not really thought about it that much before but the most obvious feature to me is that Blog software is designed around a quick and easy publishing model first and foremost. It is designed to allow non technical authors the ability to very quickly compose and post their thoughts and for readers to comment directly. It is social media, it is immediate, it is iteractive. In order to make that possible, a blog (typically) is based around a simple content management system. It usually has a basic visual design built from generic templates rather the customised design of websites. It normally has a standardised navigation structure based on a chronological list of postings. It doesn't normally have a complex information architecture with layered menu structures like a website; it relies on keyword metadata to allow topic searches. Navigation is generally linear and date based. Exploring a blog is a bit of a linear process and finding a half remembered article can be pretty difficult given the data based approach. Most blogs look pretty much the same and come with the same tools and features.

Websites, on the other hand are more like cross-referenced books and exploit the power of hyperlinks to the full. They are often designed to look good, and allow flexible custom visual design. Content is normally organised in a deliberate topic based tree structure and each site's information architecture is unique and custom designed for the audience. With the exception of a what's new page, is not normally date ordered, rather it is topic based. The information flow goes from the author to the reader, not the other way around. It is not social media. Social media capability is usually done through auxiliary parts of the site like this forum.

You seem to be defining a blog in two ways, first by the structure of the navigation and organization of the content.  However, something like Wordpress, normally considered to be the definitive "blog" CMS, can present content in either of the two broad methods you mentioned. There's no reason content has to be presented in a chronological list.  Articles are easily organized by category and presented in a tree structure if that's what you want to do.  The content organization seen on this website would be easily accomplished.

Furthermore, while WordPress is certainly accessible to those with lesser technical skills, it is by no means a "simple" CMS. It's actually quite powerful and infinity flexible, with the ability to use plug-ins that can do pretty much anything you can do on any other system or with custom code.

There's nothing that you attribute to a "website" that couldn't be done with a "blog" setup.  The reason most blog sites look pretty much the same is because they tend to use similar templates, and because they're setup and operated by people with limited technical means to customize things.  However, for someone with moderate programming skills, a CMS like Wordpress is extremely customizable. This site could EASILY be done with Wordpress.

Your second criteria seems to be defining a blog as "social media", but that label is usually applied to situations where the content is generated primarily, if not completely, by the users.  Facebook and Twitter are prime examples of such, but a blog, on the other hand, where the content is generated by a particular individual or small group of persons, generally does NOT meet those criteria.  Some blogs may be more social than others, with regards to how much feedback may be generated by the readers, but many blogs have neither comments or discussion forums, nor any other method for readers to participate other than by reading.

For me, the definition of a "blog" is a site, or section thereof, that features as its primary content articles, reviews, or editorial commentary by a particular person or small group of people, and where new content is added on a reasonably regular basis.  Luminous Landscape fits that description. 

Subject matter is not a factor: the site could be about Star Trek, political topics, medicine, or the author's cats.  How the site looks is not really a primary factor either.  Navigation is not a factor: the site can be organized, disorganized, or whatever in between. The ability of readers to comment or discuss is not a factor.  How the articles are presented is not really a factor either, although the most recent entries are usually given prominance.

If you take a careful look at this site, you see that everything falls into three categories, which ultimately correspond to three different content management systems which have been used side by side.

• The forums are handled by the popular Simple Machines Forum software used by many sites.  Note that the forum pages all feature a single link at the top to take you to the site's home page.  Otherwise they're completely separate.
• The store is handled by the Zencart eCommerce software.  This software doesn't always nicely co-exist with other stuff on the same server, so they've gotten around that problem by creating a subdomain for the store: store.luminous-landscape.com.  Again, the store pages feature a single link at the top to take you back to the site's home page, and otherwise they're completely separate.
• The actual content pages all follow the same basic template, and they're organized by categories like "essays" or "reviews".  It certainly looks like it's being managed by some sort of CMS.  I don't know which one, and it could just easily be something custom as not, but I could see doing it with Wordpress easily enough.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if one likes applying the label of "blog" to any particular website, including this one.  What does matter is if that website is doing the best job it can at presenting its content to its readers and facilitating whatever degree of reader interaction is desired.  Personally I think that while this site does a great job overall, there's still a little room for improvement on the interaction side of things.

[Dave Millier]

Mike, thanks for that description.

I would say that based on the flexibility of your definitions, there is no difference between a blog and a website - for example my company intranet is a website but by your definition it is also a blog (even though it contains things called blogs, wikis and forums as secondary services).  You simply seem to have made the term blog and website synonymous and therefore not particularly useful.

I would say that you were asking Michael to add a facility for users to add comments to the bottom of every web page in a style commonly associated with blogs. That's hardly the same thing as turning the site into a blog as I understand it but it would fit your definition.

For the record (as a web developer) my own working definition of a website is: a collection of HTML/CSS pages gathered together and linked in a navigation structure that presents the pages as an organised site. I suppose a blog fits into that simple definition but I definitely think of blogs as narrower, more specific implementation of a website.  One technical difference that does spring to mind is that a traditional website can be build from hand coded flat html and css in Notepad without the use of any productivity tools. To my knowledge all practical blogs are based on some kind of content management system (like Wordpress) and do not involve any kind of hand coding of markup. It's a word processing experience for the author. In my office we do use a CMS for our public facing website but not for our internal intranet. The entire 50,000 pages of content there has been hand coded in Frontpage (and latterly Expression web) by our web team of 5 people. The content authors supply the content in emails, word docs, spreadsheets and pdfs. We build the intranet from this source material. This is a very different model and experience from a blogging environment to my mind.

[mikefulton]

Dave, you seem to be using "website" to refer only to specific styles or types of site, and I think that's confusing the issue.   If "website" is something more specific that doesn't apply to everything, then what's the applicable meta term? By most people's definition, the term "website" is applicable to basically ANY AND EVERY site there is, regardless of structure, content, or anything else.

I would say that you were asking Michael to add a facility for users to add comments to the bottom of every web page in a style commonly associated with blogs. That's hardly the same thing as turning the site into a blog as I understand it but it would fit your definition.

Close but not quite.  I was asking if they had ever considered adding comments to specific content pages, not necessarily every page.  And as much as I was wanting the feature, I was also just plain wondering about if the idea had been considered at all.

For the record (as a web developer) my own working definition of a website is: a collection of HTML/CSS pages gathered together and linked in a navigation structure that presents the pages as an organised site. I suppose a blog fits into that simple definition but I definitely think of blogs as narrower, more specific implementation of a website.

I am not quite sure that "narrower, more specific implementation" is really the right way to differentiate a blog site, but I generally agree with you up to this point.  But I'm left wondering what else, besides blogs, you don't consider to fall under the heading of "website", and again, what is that all-encompasing term that covers everything?

One technical difference that does spring to mind is that a traditional website can be build from hand coded flat html and css in Notepad without the use of any productivity tools. To my knowledge all practical blogs are based on some kind of content management system (like Wordpress) and do not involve any kind of hand coding of markup.

I actually do know of a few blogs which don't use any sort of CMS, but they are very rare.

In my office we do use a CMS for our public facing website but not for our internal intranet. The entire 50,000 pages of content there has been hand coded in Frontpage (and latterly Expression web) by our web team of 5 people. The content authors supply the content in emails, word docs, spreadsheets and pdfs. We build the intranet from this source material. This is a very different model and experience from a blogging environment to my mind.

Doesn't especially sound like a blog to me, but i'd make that assessment based on the description of the content, not by how the site has been created and maintained.

However, I would submit that the main reason it's done the way it is, without any sort of CMS, is because this thing was originally just a handful of pages with some simple menu system, and it's just grown page by page over time until it's become the monster it is now.   It's way past the stage where it should have been moved into a CMS, but you haven't done so because you simply have more important things to do, and also because it's not for public consumption, it generally WORKS, and it's not that hard for your web team to add content as needed.  Nobody in their right mind would have DESIGNED it that way... but evolving into the current setup isn't hard to imagine at all.

By the way, you might want to consider taking a look at MEDIAWIKI, the wiki software behind Wikipedia.  It's not that hard to setup and you could easily use it along side your existing setup to handle NEW content, even if you don't bother moving over old content.  When I used to work on the Web Team at NVIDIA, our internal web was basically a combination of customized pages and a couple of different MediaWiki setups and it worked very well.  The big advantage you get from having something like that in place is the ability to SEARCH.  That's something you rarely have with a big collection of unmanaged custom pages.

[Dave Millier]

Hi Mike

We make use of wiki software quite extensively on our intranet as a way for users to generate their own content in the absence of a CMS. We do have very specific business rules about how authors decide what content is suitable for the wiki and what needs to go on the corporate intranet web pages.  You're right, we should have a CMS and indeed we nearly did. The CMS we use for the external website was originally intended to be extended to the intranet but our experiences of implementing the CMS put us off doing it for the intranet and the project was canned.

D