When I started a website in late 2000 blogs were barely beginning to enter internet consciousness and usually involved someone designing the blog from scratch. Over the years, as we all know, blogs have multiplied to the point that no-one can keep up. I still keep all of my poems on my website (though a good deal are hidden now and don't show to visitors due to sheer volume). I still get around 60 hits a day on the website so people clearly are visiting. No-one signs the guestbook so I don't know who. I have a lot more visitors than comments on my blog, too, but I DO get comments so the blog provides an interaction with the reader that a website never can give.
My questions are these: How many of you have a website now? How many of you had a website but closed it when you began blogging? If you do have a website, how do you use it, ie to showcase certain things, to keep most of your creative work there, or....??
Do you think we'll still see websites, other than business/professional ones, on down the road or do you see them slowly fading away.
14 comments:
I'm not sure Pris, but I think websites are mainly business now and they usually cost money to upkeep I understand.
It seems the trend is going that way. I do see artists still maintain websites more than other creative arts. It's easier to both display and sell their work that way.
There are some free websites around, but I have a pay one and a domain name. I get 500 GIGS of space for 8 dollars a month, 24/7 telephone support, email addresses if I choose, and FTP access (among other things). I copy/past my poems into Front Page when I'm finished with one and it does the html formatting which I used to do by hand, then open my FTP program and it shoots the page up far faster than site upload programs or going onto the site to enter it.
I admit, my website now is more like a filing place for my poems, though, and not the same as before.
Thanks for responding!
btw, I'm trying to return visit a few blogs as i can now but this antibiotic has me so sick/dizzy that it's likely going to be after I get off of it before I can even wrap my head around anything. I miss Middle Ditch.
Pris, you should put your followers on your profile. You have loads I believe and I'm one of them.
i think people will just use blogs. My daughter works for a magazine--they have an online website and i believe four blogs to go with it.
I do not maintain a web site--just a blog. Why wouldn't businesses use blogs? I think they do.
I gave up my website nearly two years ago and haven't looked back. I had my .com (collinkelley.com) redirected to my blog. My website was costing me money and getting very little traffic because everyone was just coming to the blog. It's the best decision I ever made.
As for work, at the newspaper I edit, we do have a website, but we also have four blogs and they get thousands of views per week.
The server I use is primarily business websites now. I see fewer and fewer websites for poems. I think I'm more disorganized than the rest of you since the website still primarily remains where I can find a 'final' version of a poem. It surprises me that I get 60 hits a day some days and people still write that they go to my site to read 'all' of my poems. I don't put my poems on my blogs very much anymore...just once in a while, since more and more journals are not accepting poems put there. My site is such low maintenance that I plan to keep it but I interact on my blog.
Also, on my blog I can be more varied. I have haiga and poetry on my website, but not the kinds of posts you'll see just down this page alone.
i didn't renew the domain name on my site when i divorced because the server was run by my ex-s small business. he offerred to keep it on for free, but that was around the time i got introduced to myspace where i could blog, network, and create play creating these fun, picture and music collages of my stuff- for free! then i found i had a few stalkers and found out there can be some negative features to social networking and blogging in the same, very pulic, place. i still feel conflicted from time to time about how to best approach the whole thing, being a rather private person in real life... i'm trying to use blogger for blogging, and facebook for keep in touch with real life friends, family, and people i actually interact with frequently, but i don't like the way it looks as much as myspace...
Hi Pam
I use those much the same way, ie blogger for blogging and facebook for keeping in touch since it's sooo much easier to get into than myspace I keep my myspace profile because I, too, like being able to design my space and, when I post a poem there, people who know me generally show up to read it. I've gone to myspace not at all during this period when I've had so many health issues because it can be so time consuming and overwelming, as you know. Also blogs like I do here would never be read on myspace. So...I stand with a foot in a triangle. Ed Nudelman featured a poem of mine on Gather, which was very nice of him, but I had to join to thank people for commenting . Suddenly I had friend requests, etc and realized I couldn't join one more thing so withdrew my membership.
Hi Pris, I started with a blog. Later a friend put a few poems on web page that was link off his business. Then one day the web page vanished only I still had the URL. Then It was gone entirely. I had no control over this, but I wasn't upset over it. In reality, I never had a web site.
That said, I have a blog. I have e-mail. I have e-mail at the Mule. I have a home phone. A mailing address. We even got a cell phone. I'm friendly. But how accessible do I have to be?
Every grocery store on the planet is also a club. half the websites are clubs. Enough already. Unjoin me. LOL
I don't have a website (apart from the blog), even though my ISP includes some website space in the basic monthly rate.
I held off for a very long time before getting a computer, before getting internet and e-mail at home. Once I did, after a few months I started the blog because it was fairly simple to set up, and I decided, since I now have this tool (i.e. internet), might as well use it.
I don't visit a lot of personal websites, or for that matter very many literary ones. (I have a lot of them linked and bookmarked, for reference, and there are some I do definitely visit and read, but only occasionally or periodically.) I mostly don't find a computer screen conducive to reading poetry. I do read news, scientific articles, etc., on the internet -- it seems better suited to that. Has maybe something to do with the distinction Marshall McLuhan made between "cool" media and "hot" media, or something of that sort.
Other than the above, the main reason I don't also have a website, as such, is what several other commenters have expressed, it's just one more thing to do and maintain, and there's enough going on already.
Two of the main things people use the internet for are to store and locate information, and to find and communicate with other people. Websites per se, as they exist right now, depend on people coming and visiting them -- in other words, the website host has to wait for people to show up. With blogs, as they exist right now, you're not as passive, you can go find other people and start talking. I don't think websites will disappear, but their relative importance may diminish a little bit over time.
Lyle and H, thanks for your feedback. I don't like to read a lot of poetry on the screen either. I tend to print out poems I like and read them on paper after going more quickly through a journal, for example. I have a used black and white laser printer that goes on and on so I can do this.
H,I'm not sure what you meant by websites as clubs. I never know who's been on mine and, to be honest, that's a low priority for me now...way below the storage issue for me. Blogging on myspace really is a big club, though, and one reason I've eased off. The same people tend to read/comment on your posts, with occasional new people who then may or may not join in.
I'm glad artists maintain websites. I follow a few artists' blogs from time to time but it's so much easier to go to their website and find their work all in thumbnails and in one place. I'm a nut for art and keep my favorite art on my hard drive, then if I want to use that art with a poem I keep a record, too, of the URL, and write for artist permission. All of that is for my own pleasure and if nobody ever looks it doesn't matter.
As a (somewhat) working musician I find my website still useful for posting mp3's, details of events, etc., and as a presentable electronic business card (which I have on my real card). The blog format is more dynamic (what meets the eye as often as one posts), but postings of poems etc. get pushed into netherworld with each new posting. My website is not that expensive to maintain. If though I have a new venture with a few items on it (i.e. my chapbook press) I'm most inclined at least at first to set up a blog for it, then maybe set up a website when I have time/abundance of material.
Hi Brian. I keep forgetting that you're a musician, too. Yes, a website would be the better overall vehicle for that and you're right, too, about things going down the blog and disappearing. I seriously doubt anyone goes far back in my blog when reading, but they click all over my website. I have a site meter that shows entry pages to my site. A lot now are the search engines and links from other places, but I still find people entering from poems I wrote ages ago.
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