Blog, website or forum?

[David Beroff]

What is the difference between a blog, a website and a forum? how to distinguish if it is a blog or a website or o forum. what are your thoughts?

 

[VirtuBox]

The main difference is how the content is published. With a blog, you only have a list or articles written by one/several author(s). With a website, you will have static pages, used to present the company/owner. And with the forum, you have categories with threads written by a community.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

I am wondering which one will give me best web traffic from search engines?
I read that everyone wanted to build blogs because it is a great platform to drive traffic from search engine and social media.
It that right?

 

[VirtuBox]

VirtuBox

Yes, blogs are probably the best platform to get traffic from search engine, because blogs articles follow all the Google guidelines to be indexed quickly.
The best blogging platform I have used to get traffic from search engine is Ghost, with native support for AMP and all SEO settings available.

 

[KelvinSmith]

KelvinSmith

You can also create membership sites selling digital products if that is the route you want to go. But, the good thing is that you can also use paid traffic to get subscribers for your membership site. This can earn you some nice monthly recurring income.

 

[Mahfuz]

Blog is mainly a writing platform where you can write about different topics & express your views. Website is for specific purpose & just carries information. Forum is a platform for everyone's participation. Everyone comments in live & make discussion.

 

[instacarma]

A blog, a website and a forum all are very different. A website is the main source of our product or service. Whereas a blog is a part of website where we can publish our journals and latest updates regularly.And forum is something different which one is otherwise called as discussion board where we can share our ideas, knowledge about some product or service or anything also we can get new more idea for our own service.

Thanks

 

[casualhost]

Blog and forums are scripts ( PHP ) and are more resource hungry. Blogs are where people/many authors write about stuff and post online. There are many easy to use applications with nice themes.

Forums are like this. It's like reddit, but for certain topics/categories. I would say reddit is a worldwide forum

A website is any .com/net/anything , can mean anything haha

 

[AlphaNine Vini]

A blog could be personal or niche topic. Website represent a business or service or a product or even some times a event can be personal or professional. Forums are platforms for professionals who wanted to discuss their issues specific to their niche industry.

 

[WHGBTom]

WHGBTom

Good point, they serve different purposes and before you do either, its probably best to know what you want out of it

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

Good explanations! There is a thing making me confused, it is I should include "blog" or "forum" word into the URL or domain name if I want to build a blog or forum, that will be better? for example, I can create url like this blog.example.com or example.com/blog/ or I can build example.com as a blog?

 

[openhosting]

In my opinion, a website can either be a forum or blog but is not limited to that. A website can also be a store or any online platform your can think off. A blog is a collection of posts from a single person or group arranged per category or timeline. A forum is collection of threads or posts from different people. A forum can also be protected with log ins.

 

[centurion]

Hello David
Have a wonderful day.

Hope you are well. The best difference between blog, website and forum by my opinion is-

Blog: Its a one type of online diary. You cna become a good blogger to earn huge from online. Like if you start writing any thing like photography or travel or business or affiliate marketing or games or camera or mobile phone than there are huge companies available in this world who will pay you for show their ads to your blog. So you cna become a good earner.

Website: Website is a collection of web pages where these web pages are mostly necessary to show your professional services or your product or your business. You can also earn a huge by placing third parties ad/banner on your website. Good content or unique content based website have a great value in this world. Website small parts should need to update every day like web gallery or picture gallery with SEO tags should need to update so that Google or another search engine can understand every day some thing new on your website.

Forum: Forum like this is a forum where we are all writing to gather knowledge or to pass knowledge or to gain knowledge. This is possible to earn from forum also. Like by placing ad or banner or by placing text ad. Forum is a place where huge peoples work together and every second there have new contents. So you have to an unique identity system for your forum so that as an admin or as a forum owner you cna understand which contents are duplicate. There have no value of duplicate content in this world. Search engine always search unique content based forum or website or blog to show the latest result to their searcher.

Hope you will be gain.

Thanks
Centurion

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

I agree with you on these points, but according to me nowadays blogs and websites can consider as same type because more people are using blogs as websites to sell their services or products. Unless they are personal blogs then we can easily realize which is a blog, which is a forum.

I didn't mention to forums because all of us can know and how is a forum and popular forums have its advantages because they are contributed by efforts from more people.

 

[centurion]

centurion

Now a day web 2.0 blog links, web 2.0 blog back links and web 2.0 link wheels are very much important for any website to get page rank. For that reason peoples are using blog link wheel to make the page rank.

Thanks
Centurion

 

[vinaya]

vinaya

You have given a good description of blog, website and forums. Forums are very different than blogs and websites. They use different kinds of scripts. However, blog and website are more or less similar. The only difference is a website may contain too many webpages, where as blog may have few webpages. Generally speaking, blog uses wordpress, where as a website may be running wordpress, drupal Joomla or other CMS.

 

[vinaya]

Blog and forum are also basically a website. Website is a virtual space where you can have contents posted. In that sense blog, forum and website are same. For the refrence purpose, websites are categorized into different spectrums. Blog is a personal website, where the owner will publish about anything. Forum is an online discussion board. When it is not a blog or forum, website can be different types from a company website to ecommerce website.

 

[overcast]

The big question is what you want out of it. For example Blog are designed to be monetized and to express your personal opinion. In case of the website it is more geared towards service and the overall generic content. In case of forum it is designed to interact with the members. And each of these can be mixed with one another to form a service. So depending on what you want to put forward to, changes the way things are for the service.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

The truth is nowadays more forums mixed all things into it so that they offered services on their forums and sometimes I misunderstood their forum is a website
So, everything is become complicated if we want to know their website is a blog, forum or a website.

 

[David Beroff]

They use different kinds of scripts.

I have to disagree with this, because more bloggers are using blogging platform as Wordpress to built their websites.

However, blog and website are more or less similar.

It should be forums and blogs are more less similar.

The only difference is a website may contain too many webpages, where as blog may have few webpages. Generally speaking, blog uses wordpress, where as a website may be running wordpress, drupal Joomla or other CMS.

Blog, forum or websites can contain more categories as they wanted or more web pages for forums because forums nowadays already has functions to create its pages.

 

[jenniferravon]

Hello All,

In my point of view, Forums is like the discussion community where we can share our thoughts on any topic and definitely help others also. Blog is the smaller part of your website where we can share our content and engage with the targeted audience. Website is like the collection of web pages with services and product pages that defines your brand.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

I think your points are right, but a website could include a blog nowadays.
For targeting audience then forum or website also can do this without blog. It is just a common thing for all blog, forum and website can do.

 

[Pink_Turtle]

This was really helpful! thank you. Now I see the difference better. I see now: Blogs= Personal opinion, Website= professional business and forum= random posts and interact with people.

 

[Januar]

All of the online media that you can access using your web browser are websites. But there are many types of website, such as a blog, forum, social networking, vlog, directory, etc.

 

[WPCycle]

So many great and useful answers above, it's almost hard to add 2 more cents to it :smart:

Blogs. I've seen many useful blogs that had top ranking in search engines, and the content was just an "online notebook" to the writer...like "here's the recipe to a great cake I made from scratch". It was only suppose to be a way for the writer to save their notes on making this cake, with no intention of promoting it, not realizing many people would come across it in the future. Many tech blogs also fall under this, where the author will say this was an idea I played around with that's undone, and use it however you feel.

 

[JoeMilford]

This was a great, and almost textbook, response to this question. Many sites, of course, combine all three of these approaches and employ them in different ways. I use all three methods and link them all together to try to maximize traffic. It's awesome to have so many modes of communication and creativity in business and freelancing.

 

[David Beroff]

David Beroff

But at least you need to start with a platform and mix all of them into a your site.
I am just curious what you will start with? a blog, a forum or a website cms you will choose to do that?

 

[shilpa]

Each are important in their own respects. A blog can be used to write articles on a particular topic or related topics. A lot of research is needed when it comes to selecting titles for the blog; this is to ensure steady traffic to your blogs. Also to monetize it, you'll need to draw traffic towards your blog, promote it on forums and other social networking sites.

Websites are typically longer than blogs, require a lot of skills when compared to a blog, and is more useful to sell your own line of products and services. They need excellent traffic to fulfil and flourish. Sales are quite higher when compared to a blog as more people engage to it and buy the actual product or service directly form you. For a good website, it is more important to spend time on optimizating it, performing minor tweaks from time to time, and keep it running all the time so you may not lose any customers.

A forum is for posting ideas, getting into discussions, having responses to certain queries, and making your presence felt among others. If you're unclear about any topic, then you can always check with the relevant forums. You're sure to get answers.

 

[Gettingmile]

Before talking about the differences, let's see some of the similarities:
-They are all operated online.
-They all need a domain name for their online presence.
-They all render service or sell something to generate revenue.
-They can be operated in any part of the world.
-And so on.

Now the differences:
A blog is a platform where an author published posts which is usually known as an article to their list of subscribers and for new visitors to digest.

A website is similar to a blog but has more complex functions. The best example of a website is the eCommerce stores and social media platforms where many functions are performed. Usually, blogs are made up of one niche while a single website can operate many niches. For example, a single domain of Google ( https://google.com ) operates a translator, search, cloud, Google help centre on that single domain name.

While forums are made up of a group of people with common interest sharing ideas by posting and replying to threads.

 

[lingfart]

Basic knowledge about what a blog, a website and a forum is needed in order to determine what you would develop later on if you decide to enter the online money making business. Here's my take on the three:

Blog - a blog is somewhat of a personal website. The design and layout is informal and posts usually are written in the first person point of view.

Website - this is a more formal version of a blog and posts are usually made in the third person. Websites are usudo not contain personal stuff. Of course, it's bigger than a blog.

Forum - forums are more interactive than blogs or websites. Visitors could either post a thread or reply to existing ones.

Hope I helped.

 

[jaymish]

They all have different uses. A website also encompasses the other two.

A website is general it can be a personal website advertising your services or a company website that advertises company service or shows the goods it sells.

A forum is a place where people post their opinions in regards to a trending topic or a particular website or company. A forum, however, is found on a website.

A blog is a website where people post their opinions on a certain issue or information on a particular topic.A blog is a more personal experience. The concept stems from the fact of journaling one's thoughts in their personal diary.

In essence, they are different but the same.