Sometimes blog; sometimes essay

No one likes a stale website. Search engines hate dusty pages, and your visitors will stop visiting if there's never anything new to see.

Backlight provides plenty of opportunities to keep things lively: add new photo albums, update old albums with new images, and keep a blog to share what's happening.

Backlight 6 brings blogging right into Kookaburra, so you don't need extra tools to get started. If you're still on an earlier version of Backlight or using Pangolin, we suggest pairing WordPress with our WP Theme Add-on to run a blog in parallel to Backlight.

The inherent flaw in blogging is that it manacles your writing to a strict timeline, subjecting it to the tyranny of the chronological feed. As new posts pile up, older ones sink deeper into the archive, harder to find and easier to forget.

When freshness is the point, this system works beautifully: posting news, journaling, keeping a travel log, sharing seasonal events, or announcing a new product or service. In these cases, the latest update is naturally the most valuable.

But for evergreen content -- material meant to remain relevant long after its publication date -- blogging can be the wrong container.

A few months back, Jim Reekes shared a series of FStoppers articles to our forum. The series, by Rex Jones, is about how to implement search engine optimization (SEO) for photography websites, and the series is a great read. I highly recommend it.

In Part 3 of the series, he talks about using content to create a guided experience for your visitors -- drawing people in, building trust with your visitors, and driving outcomes. He highlights the blog as being key to that strategy. He writes:

... the most underutilized section of most photography websites: the blog. You don't need to write weekly essays. You don't need to become a content machine. You just need to be helpful. Blog posts are an incredible way to answer questions, tell stories, and build local SEO -- all in one place. When someone searches "what to wear for engagement photos in winter," and you've written that exact post? You've just made their life easier and earned their trust before they've even spoken to you.

I think this is great advice.

But imagine you write a post, "The Best Clothes to Wear to Your Engagement Photo Session". Four years later, it's still useful information, but buried in your archive, where no one will see it.

Essays endure, blogs fade away

If you're an engagement photographer, you don't want key content buried just because it's old. A blog is great for timely updates, but you also need a dedicated space for evergreen material.

That way, your most important information stays visible and accessible, always forward-facing for your visitors.

Creating a space for your essays is easy.

In Backlight's admin, go to Publisher => Albums in the menu.
You will see a list of "Top-level Sets". Press the button, Create New Top-level Set.
Give it a title -- "Essays", or use one of our suggestions below -- and fill out the rest of your preferences before pressing Save.
Add the new section to your site's navigation menu. In the menu, go to Designer => Menu Sets.
Identify your primary menu set. If you only have one menu set, that's the one! Press Design.
Add a new item, and name it. Set Link to: Album Set, and choose the top-level set that you've created. Save your change.

We have chosen the term "Essays" to label this content, but that might not be the best label for your website. Here are some ideas:

Essays - thoughtful, suggests a curated collection
Library - simple, timeless, also suggests a curated collection
Knowledge Base - professional, structured, works especially well if your content is educational
Resource Center, or Resources - versatile, common for businesses that want to provide guides, articles, and tools
The Vault - slightly more creative, suggests valuable, stored insight
Atlas - implies a mapped, organized way of exploring topics
The Guide - instructional, practical, to-the-point
Handbook - like a reference manual
Foundations - emphasizes that the content is core, lasting knowledge; good for workshops
The Workshop, or Workshops - educational, tutorial content
Anthology - literary and established, works well if essays are varied but unified
The Reader - traditional publishing term for curated collections
README - instructional, implies that the information is vital to the experience
Reflections - emphasizes thoughtfulness and insight, more experiential than technical
Perspectives - highlights diverse angles and voices, maybe a good choice for websites operated by a collective, rather than an individual
Meditations - evocative, especially if essays lean philosophical
Considerations - feels thoughtful, analytical, and measured

Now, you're all set to publish essays, ensuring you have a place for your most timeless articles.

If you're not sure how to utilize Backlight's essay composition features, you're in luck -- we've got a video for that, Essays in Kookaburra.

Tools in a toolbox

I don't want to downplay Backlight's blogging features; they're powerful and useful. What matters most, is that Backlight gives you options. You can present your content in the format that fits best: sometimes a blog, because the timeline is right; sometimes an essay, because the material deserves to stand on its own.

Kookaburra supports an "essay anywhere" ethos, making it easy to shift your writing between formats. Start with a blog post, then copy it into an essay or a page if you realize the content works better in a different container.

Despite all I've said here about blogs vs. essays, don't overthink the format. Just write. Publish it where it makes sense today. And if it gets buried, you can always move it into an essay for better visibility and lasting relevance.