Blogging has become an essential phenomenon in the Internet world that I can’t but discuss it here. I have noticed that as popular as Blog or Blogging is, quite a lot of people are still puzzled about it, so today I’ll take some few minute to throw a little more light on this for the benefit of those who are still uncertain about this phenomenon. Blogging was first started in the late 90s and in recent times, blogs have been springing up all over the Internet. The high flexibility and dynamic nature of blogs have given rise to the current high level of patronage that blogs now enjoy; it’s like every other website is a blog or includes a blog. With so many blogs out there, I’m sure at this point the question in your mind would be “What is a blog or blogging?”
Unfortunately, I can give you the precise definition of blogging or a blog as it is debatable, but generally we might put it this way:
“Blog is a type of website that is updated periodically with content display in chronological order; the newest content at the top, the oldest at the bottom.”
……..Wikipedia
The word “Blog” is synonymous to “Weblog”( Web-Log), this is very important as it help to add some insight into the meaning of a blog. You could also add that most blogs are updated from several times a day to once or twice a week. A blog typically focus on one area of interest from highly technical, simple information to personal ramblings in forms of text, picture, and/or videos.
Special Blogs:
There are special blogs where the content is entirely:
Pictures – these are usually called Photoblog
Videos – also known as Vblog
Blog vs. Website:
You might also be wondering what the hell is the different between a website and a blog, well both has new contents periodically and they can be display more or less in the same way. The difference between the two is probably the content and how it’s presented, as an example, when covering the same topic like news or reviews, a website will be mostly informative providing you all the facts. While, on the other hand, the news/reviews on a blog will usually be unique with a personal touch or expressing a particular point of view rather than just giving you the facts.
In other words, if you think in times of a newspaper, a website would be similar to an article whereas a blog is closer to an editorial.
Why Blogging?
Well, different people blog for different reason. Some use blogging to keep in touch with friends and families, others blog about their opinions, interests, life experience etc. Recently, blogs has also been use as a source of income and also personal branding.
Online Blogging Services:
There many blogging platform online which gives you a wide range to choose from, let take a look at some of the top and widely use ones:
Blogger:
One of the first weblog publishing systems on the internet, Blogger was initially launched in August 1999 by Pyra Labs. Unfortunately, at that time it requires a subscription fee. As blogging become more and more popular, Google acquired Blogger in 2004 and made it possible for more people to use blogger by eliminating the premium!
Google subsequently improved Blogger by integrating its photo-sharing software Picasa and Hello. Another popular feature of Blogger is the FTP and SFTP for more advanced users to directly update their blogs. For less tech oriented users there is even a Microsoft Word add-on that allows users to use Word to edit their blogs on and offline.
Today, Blogger is one of the best blog publishing services on the web.
Wordpress.com
WordPress.com is a free blogging service inspired by the users of WordPress.org, who requested an easy to use, hosted blog service. WordPress responded by launching WordPress.com. This service is simple, hosts your blog, submits your blog to the Goggle blog directory and monitors your stats; in essence, this is an all–inclusive free blog package.
Unlike many free blog services, this service does not load your blog with ads and WordPress is all about blogging, they are not trying to double as a social networking site. This service gives you every tool you need to build and promote your blog; additionally, WordPress.com is the only free service we found that gives you referrer stats without having to add a third–party application.
Live Journal:
One of the earliest blog communities, LiveJournal was founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick. In early 2005 it was purchased by Six Apart which also owns Movable Type. LiveJournal is largely free with additional features for paid users or advertised sponsorship. Despite some social network features including user info, contact information, user avatars, LiveJournal is still heavily blogocentric. Users have a list of friends or flist who are allowed to comment on blog in message board style threads and view private entries effectively hidden from most search engines and viewers.
In addition, LiveJournal provides group journals consisting of members who are allowed to post in the journal and moderate it.
Blog Publishing Software/Scripts
For even more control in blogging, you can host a blog on your own server with a blogging script/software.
Drupal
Drupal is initially written as a bulletin board system. Drupal supports pluggable extension for advance functions such as Amazon Item module, workflow, mailing list, photo galleries, CVS integration. Drupal also offers unique content classification system and tighten security. However, because of the additional features Drupal is in comparison more difficult to install. In addition, Drupal is known to have a less attractive appearance compared to other blogware, but its clean code allows advance users to add their own features to take Drupal from a blog to a full fledge community. Because of this, Drupal is used in company intranets, online classrooms, and other online projects. Special versions of Drupal includes, DrupalED, DrupalArt, vbDrupal.
Drupal is the content management/blogging system written in PHP by Dries Buytaert.
WordPress.org
If Blogger is the most popular blogging services, then WordPress would be the most popular blogware. Other blogware includes Drupal, MovableType. While setuping WordPress can be a little more complicated than signing up for Blogger, it can still be done in a few minutes and the enhanced feature/control is certainly worth the extra clicks.
WordPress is the free blog publishing system written in PHP & MySql. Many current stand alone blogs use WordPress. Along with the cost, WordPress attract bloggers with its multiple features:
- Ease of formatting and styling
- Extensible plugin support to take advantage of open-source communities.
- Manage users/groups
- Moderate comments
- Simple template system with excellent skins
- Manage multiple blogs on one server.
- Integrated link management
- Subcategory, multiple category entry
- Manage static html pages
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Contributor's Note
If you have a particular area of interest and blogging intrigues you, give blogging a try!
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