Who needs a web site?

Blogging software is so easy and so customisable, I feel that personal web sites are going to become a thing of the past. Why pay someone when you can do it yourself? Why wrestle with Dreamweaver when you can set things out simply and clearly on a blog?

I have found that creating a website with a blog is a different experience, because you tend to build gradually, rather than assembling everything, then putting it up in one go. However, if you are fairly organised and categorise as you go then a blog creates a rich resource that the reader can brows in many different ways. 

I started blogging for Kesurokai, a European-Japanese cultural exchange project I am involved with. I needed to create a project web site and also document the project between its start-up at the beginning of the year and the main event in August. The documentation has become a web site and has generated widespread interest very quickly and easily.

I have also just set up a new blog for my partner, Robin Wood to use as a sales page. He has been blogging for a while and gets on well with it, but cannot easily update the products for sale on his web site because it is too technical, and of course I am not good at getting around to it! So, I created a new blog for this and tweaked his existing blog, so they feel as if they are on the same site and tie in with his web site. Blogger isn't as sophisticated as TypePad, which this blog is on, so it was not straight forward but I am quite proud of the result.