What is a Blog?

I think that those of us who blog assume that everyone who surfs the Internet knows exactly what a blog is. I mean everyone has heard of MySpace, right? Haven’t you heard people say “I’m going to post that on my blog” at dinner parties? As a computer teacher I try to avoid using too much computer jargon when new students start my program, but as a blogger I sometimes forget that “blog” is a relatively new term to many. I realize this when I mention my various educational blogs to new students and they ask the question “exactly what is a blog?”

A blog or weblog is essentially a journal or diary that is available on the web. Updating or writing in a web journal is called “blogging”. Blogs have become very popular over the last several years; it’s difficult to tell today exactly how many blogs are currently “active”, but in 2004, Pew International stated that eight million Americans had created blogs. To learn more about the blog craze you may want to ready this Time article 10 Things We Learned About Blogs. Blogs have transformed over the last couple of years; while you will still find blogs that discuss a person’s daily events and/or innermost feelings, you will now find technology blogs, photo blogs, recipe blogs, music blogs, and even corporate blogs. This site is a blog.

How can you tell when a site is a blog?

Here are some common characteristics of a blog:

1. The content is posted in reverse chronological order (similar to a resume) with the most recent post at the top of the page.
2. Posts are separated by the post title, post author, and post date; each of these items is typically a link to further information or the full post content.
3. A blog allows visitors to make comments, so you will usually see a link for comments with each post.
4. Frequently bloggers use sidebars on their sites; these sidebars (site menus) include links to monthly and category archives, calendars, search boxes, subscription information, recent comments and posts, and site meta information. If you look to the right you will see many of these items.

If you take a look at my other blogs you will see the same characteristics at each site: photography blog, recipe blog, and the hermit crab blog.

So, what’s so good about blogs?

Once a blog has been setup it is very easy to update on a daily or regular basis because it requires little technical knowledge. Simply type the text that you want to add to your blog into a web form and click a button to post your content. That’s it, your new content is published immediately to the web. You don’t have to open a text editor, Dreamweaver, or any other HTML editor to update your content on the web and you don’t have to FTP. For the most part you really don’t have to know any HTML or XHTML code to have a blog. There is a screen capture to the right of the interface that I use to update this blog. That being said, most blogs are fully customizable; you can edit the PHP, the CSS, and the XHTML to suit your needs. You can be as geeky as you want to be with a blog.

How do I get a blog?

There are many blog publishing platforms available. Some are hosted on third party web sites like Blogger, TypePad, MySpace, SquareSpace, LiveJournal, and BlogEasy. The benefit of these hosted blogs is that setup is very easy; it usually only requires the user to complete a web form. Maintenance is also simple; a few mouse clicks and you can change the look of your entire blog. The possible downside of these blogging platforms is that their features may be limited and the blog is not usually hosted on your own domain. If you’re looking for really simple and free, this may be the option for you.

More robust publishing platforms require the installation of files on your web host. These publishing systems include: b2, Movable Type, Greymatter, and WordPress. For these programs your web host must have PHP/MySQL and possibly CGI capabilities. You will need to have some experience with HTML, FTP, CSS, and PHP. Personally, I prefer WordPress; the community support is wonderful, the interface is easy to use, and the installation is simple compared to some of the other platforms.

Fortunately, you can easily install WordPress and other blogging platforms with your robinshosting.com account. If you haven’t already signed up for a free robinshosting.com ’student’ account and you’re in my class, signup today. Using CPanel, you can access the Fantastico auto installer and install WordPress with just a few clicks of your mouse. I have created a Flash movie tutorial for installing WordPress that you can review to create your own WordPress blog today.

If you’re not into Flash movies, here are the simple steps:

1. Open CPanel - If you are a student in my class the CPanel address is http://www.robinshosting.com/cpanel. You will need your account username and password to access this page. If you haven’t signed up for an account, visit http://www.robinshosting.com and sign up for the “student” hosting account.
2. Click the Fantastico icon towards the bottom of the page.
3. You should see a menu on the left-hand side of the page. Under the Blog category there is a link for WordPress, click the WordPress link.
4. A WordPress description should appear, click the New Installation link.
5. At the install WordPress screen, select the domain that you want to install to and type the name of the folder that you want to install to (this folder will become a part of your blog address, so choose wisely). Type the desired admin username and password. Type the desired admin nickname (this will appear when you post to your blog) and enter your email address, the site name and a brief site description. Under the email account information you should only have to enter the password.
6. Click Install WordPress. When prompted click Finish Installation.
7. Congrats! You’ve successfully installed WordPress. Be sure to bookmark the blog address, the admin access page and don’t forget your username and password!

If you do not have access to CPanel and Fantastico with your host and you need help setting up WordPress review How-to Setup a WordPress Blog with f2o.org Tutorial - Updated for WordPress 1.5

Part II of this series will discuss how to setup and post to your new WordPress blog. Part III will cover styling your blog using WordPress themes and customizing WordPress themes. Part IV will discuss WordPress plugins that make blogging easier.

There have been several other articles posted on this subject recently. Check the following for more information:

20 Answers to the Question What Does it Take to Blog

HOW TO: Start Blogging