Blogging

Blogging Basics

A typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites and stories. The author might update the sidebar weekly or monthly.

Basically, a blog is a lot like anonline journal or diary. The author can talk about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of information that are interesting to the author.

Even though blogs can be completely free-form, many blogs have a focus. For example, if a blogger is interested in technology, the blogger might go to the Consumer Electronics Show and post entries of the things he/she sees there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease. If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them.

There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook -- a form of online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web browser anywhere in the world.

In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be. The thing that all blogs have in common is the reverse-chronological ordering of entries.

Creating a Blog 

Creating your own blog is now easy because there are Web-based toolsets that make the management of your blog incredibly simple -- Blogger, Xanga,TypePad, and LiveJournal are just a few of the services available. You can create basic blogs for free, and most of these toolsets have additional features available for a price. There is also software (such as Movable Type) to help you create and self-publish your blog with even more customization.

I created Marshall Brain's Blog using Blogger. Creating a simple blog is free and only takes about five minutes. You enter your name, e-mail address and a few other pieces of information. You select "the look" (template) for your blog from a set of standard templates. Click a few buttons and you're done.

Now you can add new entries to your blog. Basically, all you do is type in the entry and push the "post" button to post it. You can edit the entry as much as you like by clicking the "edit" button. When you are happy with the new entry, you push the "publish" button to make your new entry visible on your public blog.

One of the best Web sites I have found recently is called ExploreMarsNow.com. I added a short entry about it to my blog in about 10 seconds. The entry says simply:

I really like this Web site: ExploreMarsNow.

That's it. A blog entry can be that simple. Or it can be an entire story. It's all up to you.

With Blogger, you have two options for where your blog can live:

• Your blog can live on the Blogger.com blog site, called Blogspot.com. You create a custom URL for your blog and Blogspot.com does all the work of hosting your blog. For example, Marshall Brain's Blog can be found at http://MarshallBrain.Blogspot.com.
• You can host your blog yourself on another Web site. Every time you "publish" your blog, Blogger uses FTP to send the latest HTML code for your blog to the chosen location.

The incredible simplicity of blogging is one of the things that makes blogging so popular. But if text isn't enough for you, many blogging toolsets also allow you to post photos, video, and audio files. You can even post via your cell phone.