Current Style: Standard
Introduction to blogs
Original factsheet compiled by Martin White, Intranet Focus
Updated by Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk, November 2011
Blogs – the basics
A blog is simply a content management system enabling quick and easy publishing from anywhere that has an internet connection, even a mobile phone. By default, the postings or articles are in chronological order with the most recent entry at the top. Blogs can be hosted on your own server or by a third party service. Google's Blogger is hosted by Blogspot and the default address will be yourblogname.blogspot.com. Wordpress hosts blogs at wordpress.com but you can download the software for your own server from http://www.wordpress.org/. Both Blogger and Wordpress now allow you to use your own domain name on your blog.
Blogs can be single or multi-authored, and some have options for inviting ‘guest’ authors with restricted posting and editing privileges.
Blogs can be used to produce newsletters, alerting services, for recording product development, or as marketing tools. They can even be used to generate small web sites (for example Newsbriefs Oman at http://www.newsbriefsoman.info/). Blogs are widely used by experts and researchers to publish and discuss their work.
A major advantage of blogs is that there is a built-in feature that automatically alerts the search engines as soon as a new article is available. Blog postings are often included in the Google database within a few minutes: a new web page may take hours, days or even weeks.
Blogging services
There are many blogging services and softwares but the ones that most people start with are Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.com/) and TypePad (http://www.typepad.com/). Blogger and Wordpress are free whereas Typepad is a priced service.
Main features
Chronological order of entries
The entries or postings are displayed in chronological order on the main (home) page with the most recent at the top.
Archives
Entries can be automatically archived by week or month.
Categories or tagging
Most blogging software has options for assigning broad categories and/or more specific tags to a posting.
Permalinks
The most recent entries to your blog will have the URL of the blog ‘home’ page. The URL will change when the story is archived. The permalink is the unique URL for each individual entry in the blog and does not change.
Comments
All blogs have a comment option which enables any reader to comment on a posting. This can be left as a free-for-all but there is the risk that the comment field will be spammed. As a blog owner you can disable it, moderate or vet comments, or set up a ‘captcha’ procedure (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). ‘Captcha’ presents a skewed image of several letters to the person who is commenting and requires them to type the letters into a box underneath their comment. It is intended to stop automated spamming programs.
Author profile, About us
This may or may not be present. Its absence suggests that the poster may have something to hide. Most blogs, though, are ‘up front’ about who the posters are and their agenda.
The Blogroll
Yes – it really is called that! The Blogroll is where the blogger lists the blogs, RSS feeds and web sites that they regularly read. Alternatively, the list may be called related links, web sites, etc. Once you have found a blog that is relevant to your subject area, use the blogroll to find other blogs and sites in your area of interest.
RSS feeds
RSS feeds enable you to keep up to date with new postings on your favourite blogs without having to log on to the site each day. Blogs automatically generate RSS feeds for both the main postings and te comments.
Mobile versions of blogs
Both Blogger and Wordpress have options that automatically generate mobile-friendly versions of pages and postings. If your favourite blog is unreadable on your mobile contact the owner and ask them to enable the settings for mobile templates.
Backing up your blog
If the information in your blog is important to you then make sure you back it up. Some or all of your articles could be lost for a variety of reasons. Even a simple upgrade to the blogging software can result in lost posts. (It happened to some Blogger blogs recently :( ). Both Wordpress and Blogger have options for backing up your content - USE THEM!
Searching for blogs
Google has a blog search option in its left-hand navigation bar on your results page. Run a search in Google as usual and then select Blogs from the left-hand menu - alternatively go straight to http://www.google.com/blogsearch.
Blogpulse (http://www.blogpulse.com/) has a useful "Trend this" option that displays a graph of how often your search terms are mentioned in blog postings over time. Hover over a peak in the graph with your mouse until a hand appears and then click to see the postings represented by that peak.
Social media search tools that have blog search options include:
- Topsy (http://www.topsy.com/)
- Social mention (http://www.socialmention.com/)
- Icerocket (http://www.icerocket.com)
Pdf Version:
