A blog is a type of web site that is used primarily to publish articles and updates in a diary like fashion. Blogs differ from a regular corporate web site in this key respect. In a corporate web site or an e-commerce site, the focus is often on information that does not change very often.

Regular web sites should aim to make the most important information the most easily accessible. Blogs work on the basis of a regularly changing timeline and are read differently to a regular web site. So for example if you need a plumber and use the web to search for a local plumber you will probably check the contact details page and any examples of previous work. However with a blog, you are more likely to subscribe to the blog as you would with a magazine and read the blog articles because the subject of the blog appeals to you.

In general, blogs are easy to set up and can be free of charge if you use a hosted service such as WordPress.com, Blogger.com or TypePad.com. However, you may wish to have a large degree of control over the customisation
and design of your blog and to integrate it closely with your organisation’s existing web site. In this case you will can still use freely available blogging software such as WordPress, but will probably have to pay a professional to do the design and integration. Even if you opt for a paid solution, you will still have the ease of use associated with free, hosted services.

Because of the low barrier to entry in setting up a blog, many different types of blogs have emerged and they are written by a huge variety of people and organisations. Some people use blogs as a way to keep their families up to date with the events of their lives, others use it to experiment with writing, while others write about hobbies and niche interests which can find a large readership on the internet. Organisation can use blogs to issue campaign updates or present a less formal aspect of their corporation.

Some blogs are direct equivelants of traditional newspaper columns and some blogs are seasonal covering a voyage or a major sporting league. Some blogs do no even have any written content but comprise exclusively of photographs
or video updates.

What all blogs have in common is the ability to grow a readership and for those readers to contribute to the blog in the form of comments. Some popular authors can write articles on blogs that regularly receive hundreds of comments. This open, conversational format usually with a single author is perhaps the key defining factor of a blog.

If you or your organisation are starting to think about blogging here’s a quick whistle stop tour of blogging that will help you hit the ground running. As with any technology there are a few terms that are banded around as commonplace that you might not be familiar with but which can be useful when starting to blog.

Blog

The word blog is used to mean the actual site where you will publish your articles and news. It can also be used as a verb, e.g. “Are you going to blog that?”, meaning, are you going to put that on the blog.

Post

In the world of blogs, post is the word used to mean individual pieces of writing e.g. an article, news update or tutorial etc. You can “post” a piece of news or link to a particular post.

Commments

By default, all blogging software will enable your readers to add comments at the end if any articles you have written. Depending on the software that you are using to write your blog, you will have options to manage how people can comment. You can require people to register or provide an email address before being allowed to comment. You can also  set options so that you can check what people have said in their comments before they appear to the public. You will also be able to treat certain people as “trusted” once they have already posted comments Whatever you choose to do, don’t forget, it’s your blog and you can allow or deny whatever comments you want.

Comment Spam

Once your blog has been running for a few weeks you’ll probably encounter the scourge of comment spam. This can take a couple of forms. The most common form is automatically generated by computers adding comments to thousands of blogs in the hope that some will be approved. This type of spam usually has a link in it to another website that the spammer wants your readers to visit. Most blogging systems have a spam filter built in and will catch the bulk of this type of spam automatically. The second type of comment spam is often created manually by someone visiting your site and can be quite subtle. The person may compliment your site and then suggest that others visit their site. They may promote a competing product or organisation. Once again, remember, it’s your blog and you can allow or disallow whatever content you want.

Permalinks

A permalink is just a link to a specific post on a blog. They are given a special name because by their very nature posts can appear in many different places in a blog and so it can be useful to have one unique link to give to a person if they want to visit a particular article. For example when a post is first written, it may appear on the home page of the blog, but then over time, drop off the home page as other articles are written. It may also appear in a list of posts of a particular category. But when telling people about your post, it’s best to send them the permalink as this is the most reliable place to find the post.

Blogosphere

The blogosphere is the community of all the blogs on the web. When you create a blog, it joins the blogosphere. Although this is just a notional term, it does have some importance, as search engines do tend to index frequently updated blogs more often than what they regard as more traditional web sites.

Blogroll

The is a common section in a blog where bloggers link to other blogs that they like. It is not compulsory to have a blog roll.

Draft

Blogging systems such as WordPress enable you to write your posts online and save them without publishing them. Therefore you can use your blog as a kind of scratchpad where you start creating an article and come back to it later to enhance it before completing it and publishing it.

Scheduled Posts

Even when you have completed a post, you may not want it to appear on your blog until a specific time and date. This is called a scheduled post. Some bloggers write several posts in one sitting and schedule them for publication at a later date. This can help reduce your work load and ensure that their is a regular and predictable flow of information from your blog.

Post Frequency

This relates to how often you post articles. There are different schools of thought on this and it really depends on what type of blog you run, but it is generally believed that to help build reader loyalty, it it best to have a rythmn to your blogging, be that every day, once a week or once a month.

Trackback

You can set the comments section of your blog to show which other blogs are linking to that particular post.

Whenever anyone links to one of your posts, that link appears as a comment on that post.

Moderation

The process of holding a comment for review by someone responsible for the blog. This enables you to catch spam, or libelous and damaging comments.

Post Categories

Because blogs are generally published in reverse chronological order, like a diary, one entry after another, bloggers usually assign categories to their posts to help organise and collate them.

A post can have more than one category. The full list of categories is usually shown on a blog page, a bit like an index, so that readers can easily access other posts that may be of interest to them. The categories for a particular post are usually also shown either at the top or the end of the post.

Pages v Posts

When you publish a post on your blog, it usually appears on the home page of the blog. If you add another post, the previous post may then be shunted down the home page or be removed from the home page altogether. So posts move their position over time.

By contrast, a page on a blog always remains in the same place in the blog. Pages (or static pages) are usually used to convey general information such as an overview of the blog or project, details of the author or a contact form.

Posts are affected by time, pages are the structural elements of a blog. Many blogs have no static pages at all.

RSS Feed

If you have a feed on your blog (most do), all of the posts that you create are added to a single file called an RSS feed. Visitors can subscribe to that feed using an RSS reader, a web browser or their email package. When ever the file is updated (i.e. when a new post is published) they will see that there is something new on the blog without even having to visit it.

Widgets

Most blogging systems have some kind of plug-ins or widgets that you can add to your blog design. These can be small snippets of code that, for example, enable you to show a gallery of photos, the top 5 most read posts, or that display the 5 latest comments.

So, if you’re new to blogging I hoe this help you get to grips with some of the terms. But don’t forget, it’s not the jargon that counts, but what you write. Good luck and happy blogging.

A blog is a type of web site that usually has some defining characteristics which separate it out from other web sites. These make it very like a magazine. They are:

• blogs usually publish in reverse chronological order. In other words, anything new appears on the home page and at the top of the home page. This is not always the case in other types of web site.
• Most blogs allow their readers to comment on what has been written by leaing comments.
• Blogs tend to be updated frequently.
• The majority of blogs are written by one person and strongly reflect that person's view and opinions.
• Blogs are very easy and often free to set up which has lead to a plethora of different blogs on a vast array of subject and in different writing styles.

The content of a blog post isn't always a text article. Some people post pictures they have taken or found. Others publish videos they have created or found on services such as YouTube or Blip.tv, while others simply publish links to articles elsewhere on the web that they have found interesting.

A blogstorm is a word used to describe a large and sudden influx of visitors to your web site caused by bloggers writing about your website and putting links to your web site in articles on their blog.

If you do not have enough web hosting capacity, a blogstorm can have a negative effect because so many people are trying to look at your web site that the server becomes overwhelmed. In this case, many of the visitors would not be able to access the site.

The term blogstorm have its origins in the word maelstrom which is a type of whirpool or strong current with the power to pull you under.

The blogosphere is the entire collection of blogs. The term implies that all blogs, bloggers and the inter connections between them exist as a distinct part of the world wide web.

The blogoshpere is simply a section of the web. It can be argued that a blog is just a web site in which entries are displayed chronologically rather than hierarchically.

This is the process of setting up fake blogs in order to promote other web sites which carry advertising and generate revenue for the person who creates the site.

These fake blogs are know as splogs which is a short for spam blog.

Someone who creates a splog splogger.

Splogging often involves taking content for another website without the permission of the owner and republishing it.

One feature of blogs is that reader of the blog can usually leave comments about each article. When leaving acomment, the reader will be asked if they have a website. If the reader give their website address, other readers can them click on that persons name to see their website.

Links from other websites and blogs to your own website can be benificial for promoting your own website and for improving your search engine ranking.

Some people leave comments on website that have no relevance to the article simply to try and get a better search engine ranking.

However, most modern blog software add a special code to the link to tell search engines not to follow the link provided by the commenter. This means that the link is worthless in terms of improving the commenters search engine ranking. This special code is inlcuded to try to discourage people leaving comments simply to improve their search engine ranking.

Another form of comment spam is to put links to other web sites solely for the purpose of advertising a commercial service rather than contributing something worthwhile to the article. These types of comments are often added to blogs by software rahter then someone actually visiting the blog.

Providing a link in a comment does not mean that you are a spammer, but your comments should be relevant to the article and add something to the debate.

The amount of comment spam and other abuses of the commenting system in blogs has forced some people to switch off comments in the blogs or to set up their blog so that all comments have to be moderated.

Rather confusingly, meta blogging is the process of blogging about blogging.

It may come as a surprise to you, but there's actually quite a lot of it about.