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Blogging - The Infrastructure

Setting up a web site is a lot of work. Besides the detail work, which I described in my article Blogging, which discusses the issues of content, structure, and attractiveness, a web site has to have an infrastructure.
  • Server Space.
  • Identity / Structure.
  • Procedures and Utilities.
With a web site based on a Blogger blog, all of these are provided for you, and for no direct financial charge. Along with what's provided for you comes what you don't get to choose.

Two items that you don't get to choose are directory structure and post URLs. You organise your blog logically, by label and by title, which lets your and your readers access the content in ways relevant to you. How the content is stored is up to Blogger - this is something that you don't have to worry about (which is good), and you can't control (which is occasionally not good).
A third item that you don't get to choose is home page content. The home page is dynamically chosen, from the most recent posts, and is limited in size. You can add static pages to the blog, but the static pages are only visible from links in the blog. And auto pagination limits the size of the home page (and archive retrieval pages, and label retrieval pages).

Since a blog, by tradition, is an online journal, it is organised by date, and structured by year and month. The directory structure, and post URLs, reflect this structure. A blog displays the posts in reverse date order - the latest post is at the top of the first (home) page - older posts are further down the page, and on additional pages. If you want to re arrange the posts, you change the dates on the posts.

You can re organise the home page, including making the home page static, and index the posts using labels, to create the illusion of a web site - if that's what you prefer.

All that you really have to do do is setup a blog (including the blog address and title), and write a post (including the post title). The URL of the post is made for you, and you can't control that. If you change the title, or the post date, the URL stays the same. This leaves you free to concentrate on what the readers see and appreciate - content, structure, and attractiveness. You work on blog content - and on getting readers.

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