It is always a confusion among new website owners regarding the type of site to be created for long term suiting their requirements. This article explains the basic classification of websites and the fundamental differences between them. Google and other search engines may rank forum sites on top at some point and then rank long form blog articles on some other time. So, you can’t rely on that for building your site. Instead, diversify your earnings and traffic so that you can build a type of site that you want to run.
Basic Classification of Websites
Websites can be classified into three basic categories:
- Content Site
- Blog
- Forum
1. What is Content Site?
Content sites are having static or dynamic content mainly to communicate the information to the targeted users. Here are some of the basic feature and learn more about content sites here.
- Contains information on every single webpage.
- A webpage could be a HTML page mostly in case of static content or it could be a PHP or ASP page mostly in case of dynamic content.
- Normally site owners can modify the content any point of time and republish the updated page.
- Content sites are not meant for discussion of the topic rather a mere information to the user.
Website builder tools like Weebly and Wix are the best option for creating a small content site for business purposes.
2. What is Blog?
Blog – a short form of Weblog is generally meant for leaving the published topic for open discussion to get relevant comments. Below are some of the basics features and learn more about blog here.
- Blog contains posts and the posts are displayed reverse chronological order on the index page, which means the latest post is shown first when displayed.
- Blog home page is normally a HTML page contains number of posts.
- Blog posts can have archives and categorized.
- Normally, blog shows the author name and allows the user to enter comments on the topic.
- Commenting can be offered with or without approval mechanism to avoid spamming.
- Commenting can also be offered only for the registered users of the blog.
Software like WordPress is the best option for creating your blog.
3. What is Forum?
Forum is a kind of online discussion board where interested users can discuss about the related topic. Below are some of the basic features and learn more about forum site here.
- Users are generally classified as Administrator, Moderator, Registered Users and Unregistered users.
- Unregistered users will be normally mentioned as visitors or guests and have only display access to the content.
- Forum content is structured as Categories, Sub-forums, Topics or Threads and Posts.
- Each post contains a message along with the detailed information of the user who is posting.
There are dedicated software like phpBB available for creating a forum site.
Which is the Best?
It depends on your budget, capacity to manage and time to invest. A small content site and blog can be managed by a single person. However, a bigger blog and forum need multiple people for carrying out routine tasks. In addition, most hosting companies do not allow forum sites as they are resource intensive due to large volume of content posted by users. So, you need a huge team for comment moderation, server resource monitoring and user management.
If you are starting as a beginner, then the best option is to learn WordPress and start a small blog by purchasing a shared hosting plan. For a business websites, it is better to go for a hosted platforms like Wix. It is also common to have a blog on a content based site to announce important information to users.
