What is a Blog?
Briefly, a blog is a Web-based diary or journal. The earliest blogs were in fact just created by people recording their random thoughts and ideas on the Web. However, as "blogging" has become more sophisticated, blogs have evolved to much more than just a place to publish your diary. Here's a better way to think of blogs now:
A blog is a specific kind of Web site with an easy publishing system.
In other words, a blog is just a Web site. Blog pages are Web pages. They have text and pictures, links to other pages, and appear in search engines.
However, a blog is a particular kind of Web site. A typical Web site has a fixed home page and navigation links to other pages:
When you add new content (such as an article), it usually goes somewhere deep in the site, and is accessible through the navigation links.
A blog, on the other hand, has a constantly-changing home page that reflects the most recent additions to the site:
Because a blog's home page changes constantly, any permanent text appears above, to the left or to the right of the main blog text:
Instead of a navigation menu, blog entries (known as "posts") can be "tagged" with various labels, which appear in a list on the blog:
When you add new content to the blog, it automatically gets added to the top of the home page, and other items move down the page.
After a while, the older articles get moved off the home page into an archive:
Most Web sites are reluctant to link to other Web sites, because of the danger of losing site visitors forever. However, bloggers have a culture of linking to each other, on the basis that they're building a community, not an island. So a blog usually has a list of related blogs - known as a "blog roll":
As you can see, although blogs are Web sites, they are less flexible than a general Web site. The blog software dictates where new content appears, how it looks, when it gets archived, and where permanent text must appear.
However, the advantage of this inflexibility is that it's extremely easy to update your blog. You simply fill in a form with the new content, press a button, and the blog software takes care of the rest.
The other advantage of using a blog is that it's cheap to create. In fact, the main blogging software I'll describe here is free; and even paid blogging systems are relatively cheap. Contrast that with most professional Web sites, which typically cost thousands of dollars to build and maintain.
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| Gihan Perera is an Internet coach who helps business professionals with e-marketing and e-learning. He's the author of "Web Sites for Speakers, Trainers, Coaches and Consultants" and "Fast, Flat and Free: How the Internet Has Changed Your Business". Visit http://GihanPerera.com and get your complimentary special reports. |
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