History of Blog

blog

What Is A Blog?

                         A Web Log (or just “blog”) is the broad term applied to the online variant of the personal diary. Unlike diaries, blogs are intended to be public. Thanks to the ease with which blogs can be put online, people who have anything to say have eagerly jumped on the blogging bandwagon, making blogs a powerful social networking tool, and when combined with the power of the Internet, transcends geographical borders. Putting one’s thoughts and ideas online makes it easier to find like-minded people to collaborate with.

Types of Blogs

              The word “blog” give the impression that the account is textual in nature, probably due to the association with the diary. But on the Net, it is commonplace to see blogs with pictures (why type in a thousand words when a picture will do?) called photo blogs. Video blogs are a step further from Photoblogs (why put up a thousand pictures when a video will do?).  Audio blogs incorporate audio clips (why type out a long message when it can be recorded and played back?). All of the above are similar in the aspect that they are the expression of personal opinion of a single entity, what differs is the medium of communication. Moblogging which is the latest trend in this field of activity refers to reading and posting to blogs via a mobile phone.

Choosing A Blogging Platform And Host

             To understand what features constitute a good platform it is best to revert to our earlier discussion on making the most of the blogosphere as a visitor. We can conclude that the following features can be considered as visitor friendly:

Font Characteristics

1. Font Characteristics: Fonts should be large enough so that the visitors do not have to squint to read the content. Font colours for normal text and links should be such as to allow sufficient contrast with the background.

page style

2. Page Style: Garishly coloured pages are a put off; not many like to read red text off a bright yellow page. But if the mood of the blogger is a happy one, using a gloomy grey would also make it difficult to connect with the reader.

page layout

3. Page Layout: The reading experience should not be marred by an obstructive layout. Inserting ads right in the middle of the post text is generally a bad idea, as is the practice of using a very narrow post column leading to lot of scrolling. Having links to important pages at the very bottom of a long page is as good as not having them at all.

page content

4. Page Content: Extraneous content can be blighting. While ads are a conspicuous bloat, there are other less noticeable irritants. A blog can be bogged down by the number of comments posted by visitors. A page containing a two-sentence post followed by 100 comments will take time to load, testing the visitor’s patience. Visitors to the site are more interested in what the blogger has to say. SPAM messages that are not promptly weeded out from the comments leave a bad impression. A page containing 10 posts will not only take time to load, but also will increase the time taken to dig down to the interesting post. Having one page per post would preclude this effort.

                   Putting up large images or links to them without offering apreview is also a bad idea. It is better to put a smaller version of the original image on the blog page, with a link to the larger original image.

Making the Blogs

                 As is the case with the search for any other topic on the Web, you start off with a search engine. Two popular, specialised, blog search engines are available at technorati.com and blogsearch.google.com. Both sites offer an Advanced Search function and that is the best place to start. While technorati.com can offer results based on “Authority”, which is an indicator of the number of other blogs linking to it; blogsearch.google.com can search on the Author field.

                      From the results thrown up, you pick one and land at a blog. At first glance, the font size and colour, and the page background colour should not jar the reading experience. The content you are after preferably should be easily accessible without requiring a lot of scrolling. The layout should not be difficult to comprehend with too many links and ads strewn all over. The Page content should not leave you feeling ambushed—as would be the case when a couple of 500 KB images start loading, when all you were expecting was a recipe.

                  Assuming that the content is great, you can browse through other posts on the same subject by the blogger using the Tag orCategory links provided, or you can search through the blog using the search utility. You can commend the blogger for the post or air your views about it, which can be done with the Comment box. You can bookmark the site using a link that allows posting to your account in del.icio.us. You can share your find with your friends, either through an “email this page” link or through sites like Digg.com. You can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed so that you are informed whenever the blogger makes a new post. You can ask for more information from the blogger, using the contact email address or read about the blogger on the “about me” page. And finally, you can visit the blogs the blogger frequents, by using the Blogroll. And the whole process repeats itself at the next blog.

                   Keeping track of the blogs you have visited and are interested in can quickly become a huge task. Technorati and blogsearch.google.com also offer a way to track your favourite blogs in one page. At Technorati.com, you can bookmark the blogs that interest you and store a custom page with links to them. After signing up to technorati.com, you can add any blog to your favourites with a single click. So the next time onwards, you only need to visit the Favourites page. Google.com also allows this through its www.google.com/reader link, but it is comparatively more complicated.

                      Even if you already have a list of blogs that you regularly visit and have subscribed to their RSS feeds, it is advisable to frequently haunt technorati.com or blogsearch.google.com to be abreast of newer, interesting blogs.

A blogging platform: A Blogging platform is the software part of a blog which contains the code that grants a blog its features and layout. A blogging platform needs to be installed on a server, along with other essential add-ons for the blog to be functional. Add-ons include the language interpreter in which the platform is coded, like PHP or Perl; and a database where the posts are stored, like MySQL.

Important About Content, Design, And The Title

                           Like most of what we’ll be talking about here, the title, and the design reflecting the content, are important considerations. You’ll realise the importance of making the content go with the design when you see a blog that doesn’t follow the rule. You don’t want to have a hate blog with flowers in the background, do you? No, jokes apart, if you’re going to be blogging about your dreams and such, flowers will grace the background well. If you’re writing about something serious—say science and technology—keep the design spartan, with possibly a picture or two that indicate(s) what your blog is about. As an aside, we’ve seen Web pages about Web design that aren’t well-designed themselves!

                  The colour of the background, the background image(s), the font(s), the placement of items—all go into the making of a good blog. As a corollary, you should decide on what you’re going to write about before you go about designing it.

                       As for what you should put on your page besides text, use common sense. Just one example: if your blog is light-hearted, you might want to include such things as “my current mood”; if you’re very young, it’s perfectly fine to animate the emoticon as well, on a MySpace blog, for example. Now if you’re 45 and are blogging about politics, the “current mood” thing is, we think, a rather bad idea!

Another aside: a balance you should strive to strike. You need to determine who your readers will be, and blog for them. At the same time, you’ve got to let your identity come through. It’s up to you how you’ll achieve that balance—the sweet spot.

               Coming to the title, we should mention that it’s in general not a good idea to use a grandiose title for your blog, such as “The World According To Me.” No-one likes narcissistic titles… or a clichéd one like “Life, The Universe, And Everything,” or any of its variants. “My blog” or “(your name)’s blog” is also boring. Eithermake the title accurately reflect your blog’s content, or try and come up with a genuinely creative one!