Blogs

What is a blog?

If youre reading this chances are you already know what a blog is. If youve stumbled upon this by accident (which is highly unlikely), then I'll tell you. Blogs are information areas which allow the administrator (you) to post information or general knowlage that will create a response from the rest of the world who may find and view it (like you are now). Others who view it can also add comments if the administrator (admin) allows them. The admin can also edit his/her posts for any reason and only the admin can do this. Like a forum they are split up into various catagories depending on how the admin wishes to display his/her information/knowlage. (for information on forums please see next post). The fist blog was created in 1991, but was not used until 1994 by Dave Winer, Jorn Barger and Justin Hall.

One good example of a blog is http://chris.pirillo.com.

Blogs are used for a variety of things. They can be used for a journal or diary. They can be split off into mini articles and also which i have already mentioned to introduce, relay and present information on an in-formal state.


What makes a good blog?

1. Brand name
2. Being different
3. Useful and reliable
4. Controversy (one example being the Perez Hilton blog)
5. Simplicity makes them appealing

Things to avoid

1. A fad/phaze
2. is it worth having one?
3. Attracts Trolls*
4. Spammers
   

*trolls are viewers who deliberatly post verbal abuse and nasty comments to other viewers in order to get a response and have them sumerally banned. Its usually best to not allow viewers to comment unless you read each comment and only allow some to be viewed by others and the rest deleted.

Creating your own blog

Before you can begin on your own blog you need the following

• visit either wordpress.com or blogger.com
  
• webspace
• zip file
• bandwidth

Useful features

1. autosave
2. adding video/flash animations
3. drafting
4. akismet (anti-spam)
5. comment moderation

Which is better: Blogger or wordpress?

I found blogger to be very straight forward easy to set up a quick blog and its also highly customizable. I mean as you can see i'm still using it, your'e on blogger now reading this post. Its well presented and simple. The customisation options include choosing a template, changing the colours of your template, having full freedom when writing and editing posts.

Wordpress was much more frustrating. The customisation options if any were relativly crap and rubbish. There's so much other info on the page its annoying. It all seems far too complex and confusing. I'd stick with blogger because its quicker better well presented and damn right a hell of a lot more easier to set up your blog and start posting.