Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Thinking of a DestoFante website

It seems that in recent years blogs have become the standard for wargamers. They are fun - I have one, too, albeit somewhat dormant. Even if I do not write much these days, I check the blog roll on mine almost every day, and I enjoy very much what other people contribute.
So far, so good.
But here's my question: are website a thing of the past? Personally, I have dear memories of the Major-General Tremorden Redding, Bob Cordery's Colonial Wargaming, AK-47 Ztum-Setum, The Great Adventure about Great War Spearhead, just to name a few of my favorite.
The limit (and the strength, in other regards) I see in blogs is their "daily diary" nature. Yes, as a reader (and a writer), it is great to receive a daily pill of wisdom, a splendid picture, a AAR for the ages. But in a blog, all these contributions will end up buried over time; also, a blog makes very hard to arrange the narrative of a campaign, unless labeling is carefully done and the sequence of battles is not too stretched over time. This is particularly true for blogs like mine, which cover many different interests and periods within the hobby, and are not updated with frequency.
All of this to come to another question: am I a fool in contemplating the creation of a website? A site where notes, thoughts, OOB, AAR, reviews may be collected and organized in a more logical order than a blog allows? When I first started DestoFante, I intended to use the blog as a way to generate materials, and have them later organized in a proper site. The blog has become little more of a collection of WIP entries, but I still wouldn't mind to have things organized properly.
Finally: if I create my website, what platform/host should I consider? I know google offers free space on Google Site, but I do not know the quality of the service (although I would be tempted to go that route only because of the hope the technology would resemble Blogger, with which I am rather comfortable now.)
Just sharing some food of thought.

5 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

I like the idea of a website as well as blogs . . . my problem a while back (well quite a while back) was finding an affordable (preferably free) host for such.

Admittedly this was a few years ago . . . and of course my ISP offers space . . . but it is essentially blog space and not conducive to tables, etc.

I will look forward with anticipation to the results of your search.


-- Jeff

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

My main problems regarding my website were:

1. Size (it became so large that I had to move from a free host to one I paid fr)

2. The demise of Windows FrontPage (it's 'replacement' seems far too complex to use for my purposes, and I really need to revamp the whole thing if I am to get the best out of the software).

I did begin a blog to support my website, but I never seem to get around to updating that either.

All the best,

Bob

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Desto - I would use Blogger itself to host your web page... it's got so many customisable options you can do what you like with it.... as an example, have a look at some of my project pages - they may be hosted on blogger but they're certainly not blogs, they're basically static web sites....

Anonymous said...

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Then I looked for your mail address and finally I decided to answer your last post.
My name is Gonzalo and I´m painting the armies of the Zaragoza battle 1710. Could you help me?
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Thanks!

Roby said...

Bè, mi sono posto diverse volte i tuoii stessi interrogativi, soprattutto quando mi resi conto di quanto fosse poco fruibile il Blog nella narrazione delle storie di Foghorn.
A prima vista, un Blog ha l'impronta dell'ultimo inserimento in ordine cronologico ed è, come dire, poco "complessivo". Semmai riprenderò l'attività ludica mi piacerebbe creare un sito web.