The Blog according to John

© May 2019 Anthony Lawrence

John Dvorak is an old timer in the PC world, and seems to be a polarizing figure: a lot of folks either hate him or love him, with little middle ground. I'm in that middle spot though, so my disagreement with some of his recent comments on blogging have no basis is animosity. I like John, I just don't always agree.

Probably my biggest departure from John's view of the way blogging ought to be is in his insistence on structure. John seems to be saying that a blog must present several articles on its home page, in a top-down, newest to oldest manner, and that certain specifically named elements must also be present.

Wrong. What makes a blog is the nature of its content and the frequency of posting. Structure is unimportant. This site and most of my other sites are blogs, even though only one has a page that looks like John's description. Even that site doesn't do that for its home page; I prefer to list the newest articles as links rather than article text itself. As each of these is updated daily, the sites are Web Logs. Period. If you don't like it, get over it: this isn't ninth grade English composition where the teacher marks you down if your name isn't exactly one inch from the top of the page. This is the web, and we can do our blogs however we damn well please.

Links: Dvorak's Blogging Primer

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