According to wikipedia, A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogging software has evolved a lot in the last few years and it is much more powerful and flexible than when first created. There are still web based blogging services that fit this definition but there is also software that lets you place the blog on your domain and give it much more flexibility and power without knowing any programming or HTML.

Word Press is one of these new breeds that give you more control. With this blogging software you can create a combination of static pages and the standard blog pages. You can create multiple categories which gives you the ability to focus on one keyword phrase per category. Example: Let's say your blog is about anything related to web hosting. You might have posts in categories for PHP, Content Management Systems, security, HTML, shopping carts, control panel and more.

Search engines and your visitors know what type of content to expect in each of these categories. Placing posts into themed categories makes it easier for the visitor to find what they are seeking. Sorting your posts into categories is a way to get highly targeted traffic and the more targeted your visitors are the better you can match your monetization efforts from Adsense, Amazon or other merchants to your blog readers.

There are thousands of both free and commercial templates available online or you can find one that's close and modify the look to fit your desired theme.

Thousands of third party plugins have been written to add features, functionality, security and more to the core application. If you search long enough, I'm sure you'll find the plugins you need to turn your blog into the combination website and blog you desire without hiring programmers or knowing HTML or CSS.

Note: You should learn the basics of both HTML and CSS so you can further modify your blog into something as unique as you.

As good as blogs are, they may not completely fit your needs. Ecommerce is one function where you may wish to have a more traditional site with a shopping cart as your primary lead in and use a blog on that domain for customer feedback, polls, surveys and for articles you wish to put on your site to provide added value to your visitors and customers.

By knowing the focus of your business and what you wish to achieve with your web presence, you can make an informed decision on whether weblogs which are also known as blogs are the right platform for you.