difference between blog and normal website

[pwired]

What is the difference between a blog and a normal website ?

Why can´t I make a template for a blog the same as I would

make a template for a website ? Or use an existing template

for a website and use it for a blog ?

[Soma]

What is normal website?

The date published?

[renobird]

A blog can be a standalone site, or it can be one part of a website.

They can easily live together in one ProcessWire install. That isn't really how the blog profile is currently set up. It's meant to be a standalone blog and not a "section" of a site.

[adrian]

You can create a blog component within an existing site using PW templates and page fields for categories and tags.

A blog can be a standalone site, or it can be one part of a website.

They can easily live together in one ProcessWire install. That isn't really how the blog profile is currently set up. It's meant to be a standalone blog and not a "section" of a site.

I know that kongondo is working on an installable blog, which will be awesome, but if you want to use Ryan's blog profile in an existing site, you can try this out:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/4420-page-list-migrator/?p=56484

This will let you install the blog into any subpage of your site and includes all the files required to make it work out of the box, although the styling will match Ryan's so you will need to tweak the css to match your site.

Make sure you test on a copy of your site first as Page Tree Migrator is still not quite considered production ready and this blog install is a proof of concept at the moment, but still fun to play with

[pwired]

What is normal website? The date published?

If you make a website for a client you don´t make a blog if the client is not asking for a blog.

So there is a difference. Ok I shouldn´t have said "normal website" that is not the clearest way

of saying what I meant. Sorry for that.

Also there is a blog profile in processwire so I thought a blog has different functions from "a not blog" site

So I was wondering what are the differences in a template for a blog website, if any. Maybe I need a

template that is made specially for a blog or I can use for examle a template for a 3 column website

and use that for a blog website. That was actually what I meant to ask.

[MarcC]

Blogs are just a collection of features around the "date-ordered content" idea. For example, the Tesla blog:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog-and-press-releases

Features:

• Articles listed in reverse date order
• Articles show a thumbnail & linked title, byline, date, and tags listing.
• The sidebar shows features to show articles by tag, by date, and then there are some links.
• Individual articles show a date, title, byline, tags list, then the article body (text, images, videos), followed by comments.
• Sidebars for individual articles show social media sharing links.

This is all (relatively easily) doable in ProcessWire with any kind of layout, so it's up to you and your client to decide what their blog will be.

If you make a website for a client you don´t make a blog if the client is not asking for a blog.

That's true, but remember that your client may be hoping that you will give feedback about what they are asking for.

In my opinion, and according to many of my clients, a valuable part of my job is pointing out to my clients the common things that people always want later but don't think they'll ever want when they're first thinking about their site.

The blog (or whatever they want to call it) is one of those things people always want at some point. In the space of three weeks one of my clients went from "we have a blog that we never update" to "please remove our blog" (with that why-did-we-ever-do-that finality) to "please put the blog back, but hide it from the front page of our site if we don't have any recent articles." Businesses almost always reach a point where they get frustrated if they don't have a place to display timely information about changes to their business.

My short list of things people usually leave out, that they should really not neglect:

• Blog / news area
• Website search function
• Site map
• Privacy policy

I will often let the discussion slide if the client is feeling overwhelmed with a cool new site with hundreds of features. If that's the case, we can talk about this stuff later when I have their fresh analytics data in hand. When even the most stubborn client sees a comparison of "actively blogging and sharing content" visitor stats vs. "just a brochure website" visitor stats, they tend to take a more nuanced view of the value of a website. I try to blog actively on my own websites so I know what kind of results they can expect from the additional marketing communication.