Now, that's a good question!
Basically, a blog-centric website is a website that has been constructed using blog-based computer software and computer technology. Blogs were originally started a few years back - as a means of creative expression. A place to publish your thoughts and pictures quickly and easily, and a place for your friends and family to respond to them. A fast interactive publishing world if you will.
In the past few years, the popularity and the simplicity of blog technology has grown enormously and many people across the country (actually the world) are using blogs as a basis for their entire website.
Why? Because creating a website from blog technology is so easy.
You don't have to know HTML, you don't have to learn Dreamweaver or Frontpage or other complicated web-based software - all you have to know is how to type and to take a picture - that's if you want to upload your own photos! Yes, it's that simple.
So, after interviewing a ga-zillion web designers who kept on saying to me - create a blog-based-what? and lots of trial and errors with different people over several years, I decided to plunge forward and create my own site. I had already connected with Typepad, a wonderful blog company in San Francisco, where I had put up my original blog in April, so I decided to stick with them on my new expanded web-adventure that I began last August.
They've got this truly helpful staff that gets back to you 24/7. For those of you who need support (as I did again and again) they answered all my questions within hours. And I'm not kidding you when I say - all you have to know is how to type and to read.
The monthly cost of Typepad's service is minimal (less than $15 a month), and my entire web-site - which is actually a series of blog pages sits on their server. Yes, that's right. Every page on the site is actually a blog, which looks like any other web page. There are a couple differences though.
Instead of needing to know HTML - all I have to do is "type into my posts," on an existing template (I customized mine with my own logo) which form the basis for each blog page's content. I can publish any new content instantly (and as much as I want), and have it "published" to the world immediately by pressing a save button. Secondly, if I wanted you to, you could actually post your comments in response to my post on every page of this site.
In Spirited Woman's case, our actual GO, BLOG, BLOG, BLOG page is the only one where you can post your comments. It is on that page, that I have turned the comment capabilities on.
This whole concept is all very exciting to the world of web design and to communities for women (and men and anybody). It means that we in the world of Spirited Woman can instantly and interactively communicate. Think of this site as your very own SPIRITED WOMAN Newspaper, with the potential of daily fresh content. Additionally, the blog world offers the capability of having more than one author on a site - and perhaps one day - there will be a team of "spirited women" authoring content here.
Another blog-point is that it is very easy to use RSS feeds on blog technology, and in Typepad's case, their software is already set-up to do Videocasting (Spirited Woman TV, anyone?) and Podcasting, which will become more and more important, as more people listen to everything from songs to radio shows on their Ipods. We've just begun our podcasting and you now can hear me being interviewed on the various radio shows I've done. Wow.
So there you have it. I believe 100% in Typepad. And I feel passionately that this company is on the road to the future. I urge you to try them too. The first month is free!
If you want to know more about any of this, please feel free to contact me at NancyMills@thespiritedwoman.com or contact Typepad directly.
May the blog-centric force be with you.
