With the absolute explosion of blogs and the tools to create and maintain them, it’s pretty safe to say this trend is here to stay. So, let’s examine what they are and what you can do with them.
What is a blog? Well, the word blog us a contraction of two words, web and log. In its purest functional sense, a blog is a combination of an online journal and guest book. In a blog, the system administrator creates dynamic web pages using a web form. If allowed by the blog owner, visitors may add comments to blog entries.
How are blogs created? Basically, there are two options for creating blogs.
First, you can create a blog on someone else’s site. This is by far, the easiest way to start blogging. The most popular blog creation service is Blogger.com, owned by Google. This is a great starting point for the "newbie blogger" and is free. While this option is one of the easiest, you are constrained in many aspects of customizing your blog.
Your second option is to host the blog on your own server. The most popular blogs include well known names such as; WordPress, pMachine, and Movable Type. A list of open source blogs and a demo of the major ones can be found at http://www.opensourcecms.com .
When compared to the first option, these are little more difficult to setup, but as blog administrator, you have absolute control of every aspect of your blog. You can add different color schemes known as themes, or you can add functionality to your blog through the installation of plugins or modules. In most cases, these themes or plugins are copied/installed onto your server and activated through the administration control panel.
What can you do with a blog? While many personal or community blogs have the goal of simply relaying information to family, friends or members, the humble blog has been thrust into many limelights. Internet marketers are using blogs as niche sites for: adsense income, membership sites, newsletter administration, shopping carts, forums, email list building – just to name a few. Political campaigns are using blogs with their party members. Corporations are using blogs to keep customers, partners and shareholders armed with new information. Universities are using blogs for capturing research data. All without the hassles of building and maintaining static web sites.
Why start a blog? Probably the biggest single reason for starting a blog is for sharing your specialized information with like-minded individuals. There are secondary reasons such as compiling your storehouse of knowledge into a single location. With a blog, you can add an entry per day or an entry per week. It’s all up to you.
So what are you waiting for, let’s go blogging!
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