Genii Weblog

Is your blog part of your website?

Wed 6 Aug 2003, 12:59 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
While working on designing our new website, I was talking with Rocky about blogs and websites.  His blog gets almost 300 hits a day on a regular basix, but his website gets far fewer.  This is OK with him, because his "product", as it were, is himself, and he comes through more clearly on his blog than on his website.  My blog gets significantly fewer hits, more like 100 a day, but I get almost the same number of hits on my website as on my blog.  That is right for me, as we sell software products, so we want people to see those.

Anyway, it hit me that in this case, the weblog should not be a separate entity, but should be part of the actual website.  I don't just mean a link from the website, which it has had for a while, but a real integrated part of the website, with products and company information and such all accessible with a single click.  Since our new web design is very flexible, I started creating a version that would work this way this evening.  The main functionality was easy, but integrating the CSS was a pain.  Anyway, it is not 100% functional yet, but take a look at this link to see what it will look like when completed.

By the way, it is a tribute to the incredible flexibility and agility of Notes/Domino that I was able to spend a couple of hours, completely alter the look and feel and handling of this site, and actually make both sites available with the same data using different views and forms.  When I can do that with Websphere Portal and J2EE, I'll be impressed.

Copyright © 2003 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


34.1. Tom Duff (08/06/2003 06:15 AM)

1. The new look/feel of the blog is very nice. I like it.

2. The use of a blog as a marketing tool is invaluable. You can use it to supplement the information for your products, and to put a human face on a company. For Rocky, he IS the company, so it's additional information about "the product" and is another avenue. For someone like me (or like Joe) who isn't "the company), it's still a tool to "market" yourself. Ultimately, "I" am the product I am "selling", whether I'm working for myself or for others. The blog is a way to network, share, and market your skills. And in today's uncertain IT environment, you HAVE to be doing that regardless of whether you work for yourself or others.


34.2. Ben Langhinrichs (08/06/2003 02:21 PM)

This is my first post using the integrated blog.