That's actually a far more complex question than it first sounds.

I have a web site that's been up for about 3-4 years now, with "tip" content posted once or twice per month. (Each tip is really a short article.)

That immediately says to me "authority" (I am making an assumption that the quality of the articles is high, and wordy. Not two liner "Don't cross the road when a bus is coming!" style tips ;) ).

Do you really want to change that to a format which looks like your personal diary?

Radical changes to 3/4 year old sites should be undertaken only after extremely careful thought in the best of circumstances.

Are you absolutely certain that the change in format will bring better value to your site visitors, or a better marketing angle?

nicer looking

That can be achieved in other ways.

plus others could comment on the tips

Bolting in a forum could achieve the same thing. Either way comments and/or visitor postings on sites make for maintenance. Depending on your niche you may or may not want that maintenance.

TJ

I partly agree.

A blog is a very different animal; there to encourage feedback and discussion, and deal with it.

Fine, if that's what you want, and you have the time and commitment to make it work - you could argue that's it's a logical progression from 'tip' to 'here's my tip - what do you think'. But also very different.

You can place the blog on your own site using most of the 'big boys', but not back date (so far as I know); however, if you have the time, you can match the blog style to the rest of your site, and place the links side by side.

But don't go away with the idea that website=bad, blog=good - we only hear about the successful blogs; percentage wise, just as many fail as any other venture.

i think you are confusing a blog with perhaps using a cms (content management system) to build your site with.

reading between the lines of what you wrote

Right now the site is done manually in HTML, with kind of lame navigation designed by me (I'm no designer!).

i think what you really require is a way of developing your site where the links are all added automatically and perhaps other features become available to users (such as adding comments)

using or adapting some kind of blog software would be one way of doing this, perhaps look into other basic cms's as well.

Thanks for all the good comments.

I actually have several good (regularly updated, good content) blogs already, which is what gave me the idea. It's impossible with the site in question for people to add their two cents -- and I think they would, and I think it would be valuable, which is why I was thinking the blog format would be better.

Also, because the built-in navigation of a blog puts the previous topics right at the user's fingertips -- which is really handy. The monthly format in this case is just for simplifying production -- really, the tips are evergreen, and anyone looking for one would benefit from seeing the others.

As one of you said, some of these issues might be resolved with a good cms. Any thoughts on how best to find one? Are any open source or not too expensive? Any that you have used that you can recommend?

Just starting poking around WW for cms ideas. Looks like Drupal is relatively easy to implement and SE friendly (important because the site already gets decent traffic). Anyone here had any problems with losing rankings, etc., after making a switch to Drupal?

>>Anyone here had any problems with losing rankings, etc., after making a switch to Drupal?

basically if you make any switch, irrespective of what system you change to, if the uri's change then you will lose rankings.

can drupal be made to keep your original uri's

Agreed, whatever system you adopt, you need a smooth changeover. If you feel you need to go with one where filenames would change, you can reduce risk by initially only using it for new content, then transferring over gradually.

But a user friendly system that can preserve your current navigation, is preferable to changing, or going through hoops to get the same names appearing.

Remember that it's not just filenames, but folders too.

can drupal be made to keep your original uri's

Yes, using the path module you can alias a system generated url to whatever so you could match what it was previously if you don't want to change the existing URLs, though with a large site it might be laborious

I think there is also a module which helps you permanently redirect, (writes the .htaccess?) if you'd prefer 301's though I wouldn't swear to that, I think I saw it in the passing..

[edited by: SuzyUK at 5:52 pm (utc) on Feb. 2, 2007]

all very helpful comments - thank you!