As you can see, I have a cluster of blogs that comprise a website presence.  This was not an easy decision to come by–it took quite a time of discernment.  What did I want in my new web presence?  What was I capable of doing by myself?  What would be considered “reinventing the wheel?”

I thought to myself, “Andy…you are smart and able.  You design websites for others.  Why don’t you design your own?”

I’ve been really good at dragging my feet at coming up with this answer.  Now, I have no qualms in saying that the sites I design are quick, good-looking, and absolutely no-frills.  If I had static copy and few photos, I would be a perfect and cheap website designer for myself. But, there’s a laundry list of capabilities that I knew I wanted for myself:

  • Dynamic content – if the reader wants to read about one particular category over others, blogs are already set up to be searchable.  I can list categories and tag entries automatically.
  • Publicity – the WordPress world has breadth and depth; it can publicize for me.  I can use it to comment on other peoples’ blogs and cross-cite my own.
  • Templates – yes, I’m a designer.  No, I don’t want to design my own site right now.  WordPress has thousands of templates from which to choose.  Amen.
  • Widgets – I’m not a web developer.  I do not know how to integrate fancy things into the websites I build.  I don’t want to know how to.  I like letting WordPress do it for me…such as doing RSS feeds, my Twitter updates, linking to my other pages.
  • Photo Galleries – When I design my own sites, the easy galleries are not fabulous.  I’m not a fan of them.  The WordPress ones are fine.  I’m going with it.

So, looking at the list of things I want but can’t do, it seemed fairly obvious that I would go with a blog over a site.  But, what about things it can’t do but I want?  This was a very big issue.  I’m not sure if I pulled off the answer or not.  You see, I wanted every page of my website to be a blog.  Look around at your favorites…I did.  I looked at the award winners…the BlogHer conference speakers…the up-and-comers.  They had one page of blog, but the rest were static pages.  They had content, but were not dynamic and update-able on a moment-to-moment basis like a blog.  That was a problem.

(The exceptions here are the bloggers who have their own websites that have been developed by professionals.  The Pioneer Woman has a blog per page.  The Bloggess does not.  See the distinction?  I’m not prepared for the money or attention required to have my own website developed for my writing.  Yet.  But, I’m not a fan of finding the additional blog pages by The Bloggess via her static pages…at least that’s my way of making sense of bloggers without multiple blog pages.)

Anyhow, it was a problem I didn’t want.  So, I thought I would cheat it.  Consistent with my “ugly on the back end but good looking in front” philosophy of marketing, I figured I could have one blog per topic on the back end but make them look like a cohesive website on the front.  It’s still in the works, but I chose to make this happen in the following ways:

  • Have a consistent name for the “website,” really collection of blogs: AndyLien.com.  AndyLien.com is what I would be branding and that would be my home page at which I would have an ongoing blog of each of the new posts on the other pages (blogs).  Readers would just go to AndyLien.com to see the latest and greatest for the “website.”
  • Have a consistent image for each “page,” really each blog.  Though I’ll have to update each page (blog) each month with a new image, I chose to have it include “AndyLien.com,” the month, and a seasonal picture of me.  This way, as a person scrolls through the “website” (collection of blogs), the eye will be trained to think it’s a cohesive unit.  You’ll know you’re still where you should be by the header and my smiling face.
  • Have a consistent navigational bar for each “page,” really each blog.  For every blog, I would exclude a blogroll for Links and put in the same list the blog names/address for the other “pages” of AndyLien.com.  Like with the header, the eye would be trained to see the same navigational structure on every “page” (blog) and click along quite swimmingly.

Take a look.  See what you think.  If it appears to be good looking in front, I’m happy.  It’s an ugly mess in back, but it works.  For now.

Next, the fun business of choosing names for the pages/blogs…and the hunt for available domain names.