When blogging first came out it was quite separate from traditional websites that were usually created with a program like DreamWeaver or FrontPage. Blogs were easy to discern from other websites back then, but recently the line separating them has blurred. Traditional sites are incorporating RSS feeds and commenting systems into their sites, and blogs are looking more and more like traditional websites with some extras.

Behind the scenes blogs have become ultra-simple to create and manage, and that is changing with each evolution of the blogging software. WordPress (WP) for instance has been constantly changing and updating their software. They are ready for WP 3.0 which will change the game again in a big way, giving website owners the option to create multiple sites under one site in subdirectories or subdomains - and managed with one dashboard.

Today if you wanted a website you could have someone create it in just about a day. There would be only 1-2 pages with it and of course you'd need to add content, but it didn't use to be like this. The world has changed for the better where it relates to creating websites quickly and professionally.

Over the past dozen years I've created over 100 websites. I can tell you with all honesty, the process is significantly easier to build a site for your business or personal use.

The investment of time was substantial in the beginning. It took a year of effort to learn FrontPage web development software inside and out.

The websites I made years ago (pre-WordPress) were limited by my own creativity. I didn't have hundreds of templates to choose from like WordPress offers now in different themes. I almost always chose one of the few styles of sites I was comfortable making and that was that. All webmasters did this, truly custom sites were a hassle to build.

To summarize the pre-WordPress era - things were very different. Companies needed webmasters on staff to create sites, edit sites, and maintain them. Times they are a changing!

Today the whole process of creating a new website to go with your domain can take less than an hour. Significantly less than an hour if someone was timing it.

WordPress blog sites can use thousands of themes - which you can switch at will. You can upload a bunch of themes to your server and change them every minute all day if you want. You can test out the theme before you decide on it. It's almost ludicrous how easy it is now.

If you went with a WordPress site and had someone build it for you it might cost $100-300, or more depending how much you wanted to change the theme to customize it, and how many pages you wanted created. You could even choose to create the posts and pages on your own if you wanted. It's not difficult.

Getting up to speed running your own WordPress website would take you about 50 hours of time to really understand it. There are numerous video tutorials available at YouTube and other video sites to help.

I almost forgot to mention... WordPress is already setup to work well with the search engines. In addition to that you could choose a theme that was optimized for the search engines, as well as add plugins to increase the friendliness of your site toward Google and other search engines.

You might have a look at WordPress and see if you think you could handle the learning curve. Once you mastered it you'd be a happy camper because a full-time webmaster would be a thing of the past. You could create content, make changes, and maintain your site on your own and with a minimum of help from a webmaster you paid for specific tasks.