When I was young the term stagecoach meant a pre mechanical form of transport and boots were things I put on my feet. Yet as I have grown older my awareness of the use of language to brand things and own words has grown.
Even though both companies are large and well known in England their relevance to me is limited to awareness. I get my medical supplies online and drive most everywhere. Access takes many forms but the internet is one form that has truly transformed my life. I don’t have to travel to meet and talk to friends, group conversations, email and video all enable me to be part of global communities of interest. For example, one of my regular sites is Apparalized another is MBClub. These forums are much more than newsletters – they foster interaction and understanding and so help build communities of interest.
In fact today’s symposium subject was related to this. Matt Lee was an early student on the MA and his blog was recommended by Jonathan as one to look at when considering how to structure our own approach to blogging. Matt led today’s discussion and allowed us to explore some of the issues blogging involves.
Matt’s blog used lots of static pages and well categories and tags and we explored this a little. Then, after the session, I explored his current blog and website. This got me thinking about the similarities and differences between my blog and his. The most obvious is that Matt’s site has much more on it, but that is to be expected as his has two years worth of research and practice on it and mine does not. But by looking at its structure rather than its content one can see some big differences.
Pages, categories and tags
Matt’s blog has 23 static pages, 34 categories and numerous tags whereas my site has 9 pages, 8 categories and numerous tags. However one of may pages connects to a project based website.
The difference may be about timing with Matt’s site a completed blog and mine just beginning but it might also be about the approach, as while Matt’s site is navigable it is quite dense and busy and my site is less so but involves linking a website and a blog and so requires more clicks. Accordingly I have to make sure any and all the links work between the blog and website.
I want to make my site open and clean so that navigation is simple. It will be interesting to come back to this in a years time and compare and contrast the sites once more.
anomiepete 