Blog as a normal website: Imitating an Metal Building Construction website

Can a blog be used as a normal website?

Before we can discuss that, we have to ask ourselves what are the things that distinguishes a blog from a normal website. A blog normally have a Profile section (About Me), Archives, often a Label List (categories) linking to a page containing all posts with the same label (tag or category), sometimes a blog roll, or what the New Blogger call a Link List, and other stuff in the sidebar.

Then there normally will be a main page (home or index page) which for Blogger will have a default of 7 most recent posts. This can be altered by the blog administrator. In addition in getting displayed in the main page when newly published, each of the posts will have its own individual post page (permalink), archive pages which is normally by month, containing all the posts published in a particular month. The period (monthly, weekly, etc) can also be changed by blog administrator. If the blogger has added labels for the posts, the posts will also get displayed in Label pages containing all the posts with the same label.

As new posts are published, the will appear at the top of the main page, and the older posts get displaced from there, but will still exists on the web in the individual post pages, in the archives and in the label pages.

At the bottom of each post, there will be a "posted by..." together with a time stamp, plus comments.

Normal web pages do not have these features. Most normal websites have menu bar at the top of the page just below the Header or Title which serves as quick link to various pages as you can see in metal buildings. This website which also specializes in garages carports and roofing systems, have a very nice rotating series of photos of various building constructions.

However, a blog administrator can do much customization and changing of the settings. Via the LAYOUT, the Profile, Archives, etc., can be removed.

Let us see to what extend a blogger can make a blog appear like a normal website like steel buildings. Let us look at Best Buildings. Note that a menu bar has been added to the blog Header just like the above normal website. This was done by using the <table> tag. There are other ways of doing it which may give a better appearance than "Best Building" and I will probably publish a post as to how it can be done later. Note also "Best Building" have also tried to imitate the vertical navigation bar of "metal buildings" by having a table of links in the right sidebar. What cannot be done is to have the series of rotating photos because this will require access to the servers storing the data displaying the blog which only self-hosted blogs have. However, an approximation was obtained by first setting the main page to display only one post, uploading a photo to each post plus adding a "Next photo" link at the top of the photo which when clicked on, will bring the visitor to the next photo. Try clicking on it and see what happens.