Blogging 101

5 mins read

A “Blog” is a shortened description of a “weblog.” A weblog is a term that describes web sites that sustain an ongoing account of information. A blog has features of diary-type remarks and usually connects articles to other Web sites. They are usually presented like a list of entries which are in a reverse sequential order. The blogs may range from personal subjects to political subjects. They may focus on a particular narrowed subject or may have a whole variety of subjects.

Many blogs however focus on a certain particular topic. Topics such as web design, home staging and mobile technology are very common. Though some blogs are more eclectic such that they present links that connect many types of different sites, others are less similar to personal journals, they present the thoughts of the author and their daily life. In general, blogs have very many things in common such as;

• Most have an area of main content which has articles that are listed in a chronological order from the newest to the oldest. The newest appears on top. Most of the time, the articles are grouped into categories.
• There is an archive that contains articles that are old.
• In most blogs, there is always a way that people can leave their comments on the articles they have read.
• There is always a list of links which help one connect to other sites that are related this links are often called a ‘blog roll’.
• There is also one of many ‘feeds’ such as RSS, RDF or Atom.
• Quite a number of blogs have other features such as videos where one can watch to understand more on the blog

The blog content is the main reason for creating a website. Retail sites usually have a catalog of products. Sites such as university sites have information concerning their campuses, their curriculum, and faculties. The latest stories on the news are displayed on news sites. A personal blog might encompass many observations, thoughts and reviews. A blog should always be updated otherwise; one will find very little reason to visit the site.

The main content of a blog is many articles which are at times called ‘entries’ or ‘posts’ which are usually written by one author or by many authors. Some blogs have many authors in which every author writes their own article. In general, most blogs have an interface that is web-based and is in the system of blogging which the authors compose the articles. Other blog systems are able to support stand-alone software ‘weblog’. This is software that enables the authors to write the articles when they are offline and then upload the articles later. If anyone is interested in a website that is interactive where people can read ones articles and tell you what they think then one might just go for a blog. Posting comments is possibly the most exciting part of a blog this is because it helps one think in a broad way. This is because when people read the articles, their thinking is provoked and they can make the authors thoughts be more diversified. This improves the quality of the articles as well as that of the blog.

There also exist ingenious ways in which authors who write for other blogs can leave their comments without visiting the blog! This is referred to as ‘trackbacks’ or ‘pingbacks’, they are able to notify other bloggers every time one sites an article that are from other sites in their personal articles. This is to ensure that the conversations online are maintained painlessly between the different site users and the different websites.