Introduction To Blogging Sarah Mapel 9 October 2007

Objectives To define a “blog” To understand how a blog works To present vocabulary that is used in the blogging world To provide tips on how to get a blog started

What is a Blog? "Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing series of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other sites. Blogs range in subject.

Main Characteristics A main content area with articles listed chronologically and categorically 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"

In General: Many blogs focus on a particular topic, which can be informative (sports), opinionated (political), or personal (journal). Must be constantly updated to give the audience new material and a reason to participate more than once.

Basics Content is the raison d’etre, or reason for existence, of a blog Can have multiple authors Articles are created using an interface, so that many users can access and respond at the same time Stand-alone weblog client software allows authors to upload articles that they have written offline Users can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own article – this is called a “pingback” or “trackback”

Pingbacks v. Trackbacks Both provide verification of user’s post However, they use different technology Pingbacks do not send content, whereas trackbacks show a preview of the response Trackbacks must be manually entered

Content Management Systems Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS Blogging software is considered a specific type of CMS CMS programs focus on organizing your data, so that you can focus on writing it WordPress

Terminology Archiving: a store of past articles, posts, etc that are arranged according to some designated characteristic (date, title, subject) Feed: a ticker that alerts a user when a particular site has been updated by its author Blogroll: list of webpages that may be related to the blog Excerpts: condensed summaries of your blog posts

Terminology, cont’d Plugins: bits of programming scripts that add functionality to your blog Permalinks: permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings Link manager: place where you can manage all your links to other websites, blogs, etc Post Slug: title of your article post within the link

Commenting Comments can be changed and/or deleted by the authors of the blog In some cases, comments can be unwanted or “spam” Comment spamming: posting irrelevant comments on a blog that contain links to webpages, often to increase the page ranking on search engines such as Google

Making Your Own Blog Post regularly, but make sure the content is meaningful and interesting Only choose a few narrow genres to blog about Do not put “Vote Me” tags on the front page Use a simple theme Comment on other blogs as a way to network

Any questions?

Bibliography Introduction to Blogging. 17 September 2007.