Sunday, August 1, 2010

Thinking aloud

I've always thought that, where a personal website is concerned, it's good to have a blog as a homepage because that brings people back to your page again and again. What's the point of having a site that people only visit once? No, you want to lure people in, and you do that by constantly offering new (and good quality!) content. That means when they come back, they're back for that new content, so you might as well give it to them first thing, rather than making them click through from the homepage to the blog.

On the other hand, a blog is a blog is a blog and instantly recognisable these days. So if a person visits your site for the first time, and sees "Oh, it's just a blog", they might not take the time to explore other areas of your website (remember, it's a personal website, so it has other stuff like photos, recipes, poems, your portfolio, etc. -- all neatly filed into other sections). It also doesn't look very professional, and as your website is meant to represent you in virtual space... well. If a prospective employer were to look you up on the Web, you'd want them to see something impressive.

As a result of these rather confused thoughts, I'm not sure now which is best practice. I'm not even talking about SEO (search engine optimisation), just from a design and user-friendly point of view. Maybe one way would be to have the front page excerpt part of the latest blog post or display only the latest blog post. Make it look more... "website-like" rather than "blog-like".

Yes, changes are afoot. Not to WilfulSunflower, though. This will stay as it is ;)

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