August 13, 2003

Initial view of pros and cons of a weblog

I've been the webmaster of my law firm's website (www.jocs-law.com) since August, 1998, and I've had pretty much a free hand in it. Yes, I know it needs a professional redesign.

One of the mysteries of weblogs for me is what difference is there between a weblog and a regular, run-of-the-mill website?

My initial view on this is that a weblog is more informal, and that weblog software is basically content management software. So it is easier to keep current. Also, I can speak in my own voice, rather than try to write for an entire organization. I also expect it to be fun and good for my mental health. And I am trying to push myself to do more professional reading and writing. All in all it is a gentle exercise, like walking the dog.

The content management aspects of weblog software has potential, in terms of hanging one or more weblogs off a law firm website as an easy and cheap content management system for legal newsletters. (It would probably cost between $5000 and $15,000 to get similar functionality from a professional website design firm.) I got the beta version of MS Frontpage 2003 to look into this, but shelved the idea when I found out that the Frontpage blogging tool would require the site to be hosted somewhere that offers the most recent Frontpage extensions. I don't really feel like migrating the website from the present host to somewhere else, especially when in the future it might not even be a Frontpage site. (That professional redesign again.) For example, Macromedia will likely also have weblogging software that integrates with Dreamweaver, if it doesn't have it already.

The potential downsides of a legal weblog that occur to me are these: It is, in the end, just another website, and the time needed to maintain it will take away time from the other website. Why dilute the effort?

Second, to the extent the weblog even comes close to looking like legal marketing, one has to comply with all the bar rules, such as keeping an archive of everything you publish for two or three years, depending on the State. That's another reason not to run multiple sites.

Third, what I would say to someone who is a gifted and original writer who is thinking of doing a weblog is -- why give away your best stuff for free, and in dribs and drabs at that? There are probably some pretty good books that would have never existed if the authors had had the opportunity to do weblogs. I'm thinking for example of Lewis Thomas, the physician who wrote Lives of a Cell. Would those essays have been written if he was pecking away at a blog every day?

Finally, if the weblog is going to be a personal journal, there is the issue of constantly deciding where to draw the line between what gets published and what doesn't. It might be better in terms of passing on your thoughts to future generations to keep a simple handwritten journal. What I mean is that while people say all the time that once you post email or a website it never is really destroyed, for practical purposes it is like writing on the sand at the beach. It's going to be washed away. It is highly unlikely that my future grandchildren would ever read these words; a plain old paper journal would be more likely to exist 20 or 30 or 50 years from now.

Aug 13, 2003 10:12:19 AM | Weblogs

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