Opinions are needed
Okay, now that the fun with Chinese bots attacking my site is over, maybe I can get some stuff done. I need some feedback from people: I’m going to be switching the site over to Wordpress, and rearranging the structure slightly. The plan is for the Spleenville.com domain to become once more the main focus, instead of shifting people off to a folder. Anyway, I had a certain structure in mind, but now I’ve been having second thoughts. I was going to arrange things like this:
—The main site address, spleenville.com, would open onto a static page with links (navigation across the top and/or the side) to other parts of the site.
—The static front page would contain some info, introduction patter, maybe a “excerpts from the latest posts” widget or something.
—The blog itself would be on another part of the site, reachable by the navigation links (above and/or on the side).
—I will also have sections for stories, essays, and photos. The sections themselves are easy to set up using Wordpress’ pages and child pages facility (I thought of using categories, but pages are much easier to arrange).
But, after thinking about it I think that it might be better that the main page of the site also be the main blog index page, showing the latest posts in standard blog fashion. For one thing, that means when people click on the title of the site in the header they will get routed back to the main postings page instead of the static “welcome” page and they won’t have to hunt about for the blog link again. Also this will keep me from having the ugly word “the blog” in my navigation menus. So, what is preferable—static front page and the blog just another separate section of the site, or blog on the main page, with still other sections of the site reachable by navigation menus. Leave your feedback in the comments!
Since 2000, I’ve had the blog as the front page, and everything else more or less navigable from menus somewhere on the premises. (And I have rather a lot of “everything else,” so this surely would work for you and your wide variety of stuff.)
Posted by CGHill on 10/29 at 09:58 PM1 vote for “blog on the main page, with still other sections of the site reachable by navigation menus.”
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/29 at 11:07 PMEither option you mention sounds perfectly good.
I happen to use a static page, similar to what you’ve described above, but that’s partly because 1.) I tend to completely shift my blogging habits every so often, wiping out old blogs, etc. and partly because 2.) the idea of a “Personal Internet Portal” (though now rather old-fashioned, I guess) has always made a lot of sense to me. And I guess the stability of a static html page appeals to me, too. But that’s just me.
Wordpress is certainly flexible and powerful enough to do what you’ve described.
Posted by Roscoe Ellis on 10/29 at 11:16 PMEither way seems fine. I sort of like the idea of a static page but mine is nothing more than a place holder and I tend to ignore it. Someone could hack into my site and put something horrible there and I might not realize it for months.
Posted by Lynn on 10/30 at 07:27 AMBlog on the main front page, please!
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/30 at 08:47 AMI vote for blog on the main page.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/30 at 04:42 PM
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