The word “blog” means different things to different people. I’m a techie guy, so I think of a blog as a website that uses a certain type of content management system (CMS), which is software designed to make it easier to publish on the Web. Most of the “blogging” CMS applications help you create a website that’s loosely based on the way a personal journal or diary is organized, comprised of individual entries that are organized by date and time. (The original term was web log, which is suggestive of a personal log or diary. The term since has been shortened through general usage to blog.)If you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you’ve probably seen tons of sites just like that. But, it’s certainly not all that blogs can be. Indeed, what blogs aren’t might be easier to define—they aren’t the sort of brochure-style website that people have tended to put up in years past. Because the blogging software is designed to enable you to create content for your website without knowing arcane little codes and commands (or at least fewer of them), the theory is that you’ll spend more time creating and updating the content—the words and pictures—on your site. And the more entries you write—again, in theory—the more you’ll be able to interest an Internet-based audience in what you have to say. People use blogs for all sorts of reasons, from keeping a diary-like account of their day-to-day lives to pitching products and services. Some people who have blog-style websites focus on politics or on making a difference in a social context. Others create and maintain blogs to get back at their ex-girlfriends or boyfriends— or to woo new ones. Some have blogs in order to write about rumors and scandals; some keep blogs to cover the latest gizmos and gadgets. Some blog about history or hobbies or local nightlife or world peace—you get the idea. Meanwhile, if one of the main characteristics of the blogging phenomenon is that it makes publishing on the Web an easy proposition, it stands to reason that you don’t need to read two or three articles to get you started with blogging. You don’t. As we’ll discuss getting started with blogging can be as simple as logging onto a website and setting a few preferences.
And, of course, things can also get much more complicated than that. So, while the startup process might be simple, there is certainly something to be gained from planning your blog ahead of time—you’ll be less likely to do it again at some point in the future. Different blogging platforms have different strengths, and which you choose can depend on what you ultimately would like to do with your blog. For instance, for a truly “Web 2.0” blog, you’ll probably want some interactive features, which may range from offering your readers the opportunity to comment on your entries to enabling readers to search through photos and multimedia archives that you’ve stored on services such as Flickr and YouTube. Or you might even want to offer sophisticated community tools to your users to get them to stop by your site often just to chat or argue or make friends (and enemies). In this article, we’ll look at some of the basic terminology of “today’s” blogging, Web 2.0-style, and we’ll discuss some of the decisions you’ll want to make as you plan to implement a blog. The term “blog” can be both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it refers to the website itself, as in, “Have you checked out my blog lately?” As a verb, it means the process of adding to your blog, as in “I’m going to blog about that play I saw last night.” People who get known for their blogging (another oft-used form of the verb) are often called “bloggers,” and the sort of imaginary space in which “things are talked about on blogs” is sometimes referred to as the “blogosphere,” as in “The left-wing blogosphere is fired up over the announcement of a new nominee for the Federal bench.” The term “Web 2.0” was coined by Dale Dougherty in a brainstorming session with publisher Tim O’Reilly at a conference in late 2005, and while it wasn’t perfectly well-defined at the time, it was meant to suggest the next generation of Web applications that were turning the Web from a sort of static experience into a more active—maybe “useful”—one. (In computer software parlance, the “2.0” version of a product represents a generational step-up from the original “1.0” version of that product.)
Since that time it’s been a very popular moniker that generally encapsulates the idea of “all the fun stuff happening on the Web these days,” even if people don’t totally agree on its meaning. In that original brainstorming session, the term was “defined” when the participants listed examples of web applications that they thought of as fitting the Web 2.0 mold, such as Google’s Adsense advertising program, Flickr (www.flickr.com, an online photo-sharing site), and Wikipedia, all sites that make interaction with us, the users, the primary goal. As things have developed, “Web 2.0” is really being slapped on to a lot of different situations. The way we’ll use it in this article is in the sense that a “Web 2.0” blog and the associated add-ons you can implement may experience a more interactive one for people who read your blog. (So much so, in some cases, that they become “visitors” instead of “readers” because they’re active participants on your blog.) As I’ll talk about more in a moment, the Web 2.0 aspect of your blog is that it enables you to create a sense of community for those who visit, giving them the tools to talk back, or add their own creative sparks, or otherwise participate and get to know others who also visit your site. Blogs themselves tend to be thought of as Web 2.0, even though they pre-date the term “Web 2.0” itself. The fact that blogging software makes it easy for you to frequently update the content on your website is a Web 2.0 feature, and the fact that many blogging systems have reader-commenting features built in add to a sense of interactivity that can help you build an online community. Many blogging CMS tools also have syndication tools built in that allow other people to “subscribe” to your blog’s headlines (or full entries) and read them in special applications or publish automatic links to your work on their own web pages.
Another way to integrate Web 2.0 concepts into your blog is to take advantage of the many Web 2.0 applications that are appearing on the Web. Picture and video-sharing sites such as Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, and Yahoo! Video are Web 2.0 applications and communities in their own right, while, at the same time, offering you enhancements for your blog. Rating sites such as Digg.com and Technorati.com can help others find the entries that you post; social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us or Spurl.net allow you to share your bookmarks (and links to your blog) with others in order to find like-minded folks and build online relationships. Another usage of the term “Web 2.0” refers to a slightly amorphous design sensibility—one of simplicity and a form-follows-function approach. If you’d like a Web 2.0-looking blog, then you’ll want to search for blog-site templates (or to design one yourself) that offer a simple, clean look that tends to pervade the current crop of Web 2.0 applications. It’s not mandatory—you should feel free to express yourself when it comes to creating your blog, particularly if it’s a personal site. However, following a few simple guidelines when it comes to design can help to build community. It makes your site more navigable and useful because the simpler designs of today’s Web 2.0 sites tend also to be more familiar to users. It’s worth saying here that design sensibilities change all the time, so the Web 2.0 approach to design—particularly some very frequently used items such as rounded corners on boxes and glass-like shadows under logos—may well change soon after you get your hands on this article (if they haven’t already). Hopefully, though, the underlying simplicity will remain a part of Web design, as that Web 2.0 notion is really a return to some of the fundamental form-follows-function theories that are part of the original vision for the Web.
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