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Introduction to Blogging
The following documentation was taken from WordPress (http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging) to help you have an idea about blogging. This may serve as a backgrounder before you begin exploring the world of blogs.
What is a blog?
Blog, according to WordPress, is an abbreviated version of "weblog", which is a term used to describe Web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal Web site featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.
Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as Web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts.
Blogging is about extending conversations, on topics, from those in your immediate environment (i.e. work colleagues, family and friends) and gaining from collaborating with a global audience. Increased collaboration with people, will always lead to greater innovation and ideas, because each individual sees a different perspective of the task - giving all involved greater food for thought!
Generally speaking, although there are exceptions, blogs tend to have a few things in common:
- A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
- An archive of older articles.
- A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
- A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a blogroll.
- One or more feeds like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
Some blogs may have additional features beyond these.
The Blog Content
Content is the raison d'être for any Web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of updated content, there is little reason to visit a Web site more than once.
On a blog, the content consists of articles, sometimes called "posts" or "entries", that the author(s) writes. Some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a Web-based interface, built into the blogging system itself. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone "weblog client" software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.
Comments
If you want an interactive Web site, it would be nice if the readers could leave comments, tips, or impressions about your Web site or a specific article? With blogs, this is possible. Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.
Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called "pingbacks" or "trackbacks", they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and Web sites.
The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?
Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or "Content Management System". Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the Internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under one or more categories. While some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.
Things Bloggers Need to Know
In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, there are some terms and concepts you need to know.
Archives
A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates, like a monthly or yearly archive. The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category.
It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.
Feeds
A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the Web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds.
Blogrolls
A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to Web pages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually pointed to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate Web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs are two Web sites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs.
Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.
Pretty Permalinks
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an email message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn't change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).
"Pretty" Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should, therefore, be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are "hackable," meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog.
Link Manager
The Link Manager is the place where you can manage all your links to other Web sites, blogs, etc. You can create different categories here in which you can place links pointing to other Web sites or blogs. These Web sites or blogs can be those which you regularly visit or which are cool, or with whom you are exchanging links or those who've paid you to lace their links on your BLOG.
Blog by email
Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address then, your post is published!
Post Slugs
If you're using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as "I'll Make A Wish" might be truncated to "ill-make-a-wish".
Excerpt
Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways.
Plugins
Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.
Basics: A Few Blogging Tips
Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off; there are, then, other people who have blogs with no comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. So here are some simple tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:
- Post regularly, but do not post if you have nothing worth posting about.
- Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
- Do not put "subscribe" and "vote me" links all over the front page until you have people that like your blog enough to ignore them (they're usually just in the way).
- Use a clean and simple theme, if at all possible.
- Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples' blogs (as they normally visit back).