Tit-Bits of Blogging (Part-1)
Getting Started with Blogging
Hi friends! I’m Kumar and in this article, I’ll tell you about some of the basics about blogging in general, beyond the specifics of using a publishing application such as Google's Blogger. This background will help you to formulate your own purpose for blogging, and will assist you in getting the most out of the process as possible.
What's a Blog?
The term blog is short for weblog, which is nothing more complicated than a World Wide Web based journal. Don't be fooled by the use of the word journalblogs are not always written by teenage girls with crushes on the latest boy bands, although that's perfectly fine if they are, of course. You'll find blogs written by parents, teachers, geeks, actors, musicians, political pundits, religious leaders, eight-year-olds, and eighty-year-olds. In other words, ordinary people write blogs and ordinary people read blogs. No special skills are required to begin your foray into blogging. You need not have a purpose or a plan. The most important thing to remember about blogging is that it is ultimately your own space, and you may do with it whatever you want.
Hopefully, what you'll want to do is participate in the greater blogging community. Unlike a simple static website, the format of a blog creates a framework upon which a community can be built. With a static website, what you see is what you get. There is no expectation of interactivity between the reader and the author or subject of the content. For instance, if you visit a website and gather corporate information or information about your favorite musician or sports team, you typically can't post a follow-up to the content or ask a question which will then be answered with authority. However, that sequence of events is exactly what the blogging community is built on: communication and conversation. People write posts, other people leave comments, more ideas are generated, and the discussion continues on another blog, and so on and so forth.
Understanding the Structure of a Blog
Unlike websites, which can be unpredictable with regards to content and structure, blogs tend to have very distinct elements that follow a typical order. That is, blogs contain posts, which might or might not allow for comments, and these posts are displayed with the most recent post at the beginning of the index page. Additionally, blog templates are often put together so that the display contains a sidebar column into which the blog author can put lists of links, affiliations, and other information pertinent to the author or his blog.
A typical Blog Template
The figure shown here displays some of the typical elements you will see in a blog. Although the physical styles of blog templates colors, fonts, and so forth often differ between users, general structural elements remain consistent. For instance, all blogs have a title that is displayed prominently at the top of the blog main page as well as subsequent blog archive pages.
A day's worth of blog posts will begin with the posting date, followed by the title of the individual post. The content of the post comes next, and the posting time comes at the end. In the footer area of the post, where the posting time is usually displayed, you might also see the post author's name, something like posted by ‘yourname’. The inclusion of the post author's name is important when posting to a group blog because readers will want to know exactly which member of the group blog posted this particular bit of content. If multiple blog entries are posted on the same day, as shown in this example, each entry will fall under the single posting date heading, with the most recent post listed at the top.
As with all elements of display, the appearance of blog comments is customizable. When using Blogger's built-in commenting system, you may choose to enable or disable comments for your entire blog or just particular posts. Some times you might write posts that don't necessarily warrant comments, or just might not feel like opening comments for very personal posts. I’ll tell you more about the customization of Blogger comments, as well as third-party commenting systems, but not in this article. I’ll do a bit of research and come bach with all the information.
The final element shown in this example is the sidebar. Blog templates, especially the stock Blogger templates, almost always have a side column built into them, for the placement of author information, blogrolls, and other links of interest to the author. Some people use this area to personalize their blog; in addition to the basic "about me" information, you might see dynamic images that reflect the author's mood, a list of songs the author is listening to, or a list of books and movies that the author has recently enjoyed. Placing elements in the sidebar is part of editing the the Blogger template itself, about which again I’ll tell you in another article.
Remaining Anonymous
You will likely encounter more pseudonymous bloggers than those who use their real names and tell you their actual geographic location. Such a blogger will often go to great lengths to protect her identity and location. You will often see pseudonyms for institutions and other locations, such as the following description from a pseudonymous academic blogger: "BrightStar is the alias of an assistant professor making her way on the tenure track. She is entering her second year on the faculty at Research University (RU) in Sleepy Town." So, throughout all the posts made by this blogger, the town in which she lives is always referenced as "Sleepy Town" and her place of employment as "RU." Never will she say "here in Smithville" or "in the Geography Department at Northeast State Technical College" because such specifics would enable readers to discern her identity. Similarly, as this blogger leaves comments on other sites, she uses her alias instead of her real name. Additionally, as seen in this example, some pseudonymous bloggers use a graphical image, called an avatar, to represent them online.
The Blog of a Pseudonymous Blogger
The reasons for using a pseudonym are unique for every blogger. Some people want the freedom to write whatever they want without having to worry that their friends, family, employers, and co-workers will find some scathing remarks via a Google search.
For others, the reasons for using a pseudonym have to do with privacy and personal safetyespecially when it comes to families and children. If a blogger writes about daily life and daily routines without having a masked identity, it is possible that some of the less savory individuals in this world would take advantage of these movements.
Still others might simply want to create a different persona for their life online, different than the persona that is assumed by using a real name and personal or professional description. Some of the issues described earlier might also play into the decision to remain pseudonymous, or the blogger might simply want to carve out a new niche.
Traversing the Blogging World
Before you begin blogging on your own, you might want to spend some time investigating the communities in which you think you will possibly want to participate. You can also use this pre-blogging time to get a feel for the types of things people write about and how they go about maintaining a connection with their readers. For example, do you see bloggers allowing comments on all their posts or do they disallow comments for very personal posts? Do bloggers refer to people they know in real life by using pseudonyms or real names? Before you begin to blog, the time you spend looking around can help shape the blog you eventually build.
Finding a Community
It's simple to find a blogging community (or two, or three) in which you want to participate because everyone has an interest in something. Perhaps you are particularly passionate about technology, or you enjoy particular television shows, or you like to knit, or you work in higher education, or you're a new parentregardless of your interests, you will find people who share them. So, where to start?
After you have identified topics or groups of people of interest to you, a starting point for discovering blogs is the old standby: the Yahoo! directory. The Yahoo! category found at the following link contains a listing of numerous blog directories.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs/Directories/
Two of the most popular entries in this Yahoo! category are the Blogwise and Technorati websites, described next:
1- Blogwise. This website, found at http://www.blogwise.com/, is a user-submitted directory of blogs. Blogs are categorized by location and also by keyword; submissions can have unlimited keywords. You can search Blogwise by keywords or combinations of keywords, and you'll be sure to find something of interest to you.
2- Technorati. This blog-specific search engine, found at http://www.technorati.com/, provides users with a few ways to discover new content. Use Technorati to search for keywords in blogs, specific keyword-tagged posts, find blogs that have linked to specific URLs, and more.
After using directory listings and search engines to find blogs of interest to you, you will quickly find that you can use the links within these blogs to find even more sites that you might enjoy. It is very common for bloggers to include blogrolls (lists of links to similar-themed blogs) blogs maintained by friends and colleagues, or simply other sites that the blogger frequently reads.
Using Available Blogger Resources
The good folks at Google maintain several resources for help with the Blogger application. When you visit the Blogger website (http://www.blogger.com/) you will see recent news posted on the main page. This area often calls attention to new features that have been added or scheduled downtime that might occur for maintenance. As you begin your foray into the Blogosphere, the following are some links you may want to bookmark regarding Blogger and resources for help:
1- Blogger Help, found at http://help.blogger.com/, is the official Blogger documentation and list of Blogger How-To documents. You can also contact Blogger Support via links found here.
2- Blogger Knowledge, found at http://www.blogger.com/knowledge/, contains articles written by Blogger developers that will help you get the most out of your blog.
3- Blogger Buzz, found at http://buzz.blogspot.com/, is a group blog maintained by Blogger developers that posts items of interest which are generally Blogger-related.
4- Blogger Status, found at http://status.blogger.com/, contains notifications of scheduled Blogger downtime, explanations for unscheduled outages, information about upgrades, and so on. If Blogger is acting wonky for you, this should be the first place you check to rule out any upgrades in progress.
To end this article on a positive note, the primary tip I can offer to you is simply to have fun. Blogging can be emotionally draining, but it can also be a raucous good time for you and new found friends.
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