Blog as a Web Site

For a while now I've been looking for a client who would benefit from using blogging software to build their site -- Molly Gordon of Shaboom Inc is just such a client.

What makes Molly, President of Shaboom Inc the perfect candidate are the following reasons (does this sound like you?):

1) Molly's an early adopter of technology (she's not afraid to try new things).

2) Her last site, which I designed about 5 years ago, had grown organically. Each page seemed to take on it's own look and feel with different colors, fonts and type specs.

3) Molly's sites are text rich and benefit from many text links that lead to other pages and ideas (just the way a blog does) however, new pages were rarely associated with the navigation menu system so traversing the site felt like going down a rabbit hole - hard to tell where you were or how to get out.

MovableType's blogging software allowed Molly to keep entering text as she had but now each article would be a post and as such automatically generate a text link in the right column. Plus, blogging software automatically maintains fonts, colors and the site's look & feel so Molly could keep adding pages without worrying about creating a whole new look.

What we did was alter a blog template, create a navigational system then remove some of the blog-specific functionality that wasn't necessary to the site. All of this is a lot easier to do in Blogger, but MovableType had the ability to automatically create right-hand headers that were selectable to place posts under, thereby creating a navigation system.

If you're considering designing or redesigning a site that's content heavy, blogging software might be the way to go. You'll need enough programming savvy to update HTML templates (or know someone who has). Once the content is in place it'll be easy for clients to update it.