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Starting_Your_Own_Blog
| Starting Your Own Blog.
I was sitting in my local Internet Cafe yesterday, I like to get
away from my "home office" from time to time and it's a great
place to go for a cup of Espresso and to meet interesting
people. The rather attractive lady sitting next to me was typing
away furiously and, when she had finished, I asked her what she
was writing - I'm interested in learning how other people use
the Internet... some people call that being nosey!
It turns out she was a "Blogger" and she was updating her web
site through a web browser. She was really interested in
vegetarian cookery and she was adding a new restaurant review to
her blog.
If you spend any time at all online these days you simply can't
avoid reading something about blogs, they are becoming
increasingly more popular; and they are a great way of building
an online presence without the need for any technical knowledge.
A blog is an abbreviation of the term 'web log' which is a
relatively simple content management system.
Quite a few years ago, web surfers began collecting information
and interesting links that they encountered during their online
travels. As time passed they started to create logs of the
information that they collected and they soon started to develop
their own web logs. These web logs enabled them to update the
information and links as often as they wished.
Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online forum or to a
discussion list, they are much more dynamic than the traditional
style home pages. They are also more personal than standard
journaling, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is
often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what
is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there
are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
There are a few common characteristics of a blog, but there may
be slight variations within the classification. Some blogs
provide succinct descriptions of links within the chosen theme
of the blog. Some others contain commentary and links to the
news of the day. A few are endless stream of blurts about the
writer’s day. Others are - political blogs, intellectual blogs,
some are hilarious and some topic driven. They are all - Weblogs.
As mentioned earlier, blogs are posts that are short, informal
and sometimes deeply personal no matter what the topic of
discussion is. They can be characterized by their conversational
tone.
If a person has a web presence but is disappointed with static
homepage - if an elegant treatment of posts on a global platform
is what they want, then ‘blogging’ provides an ideal platform.
They may also consider blogging if they are seeking feedback
from their chosen audience.
Weblogs are definitely the mavericks of the online world. Two of
their greatest strengths are their ability to filter and
disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and
their position outside the mainstream of mass media.
There are many different options available to the new and
seasoned blogger alike. Some blog scripts are available for you
to install on your own domain and these require at least a basic
understanding of FTP and HTML. There are many hosted blog
services available some free and some paid. If you are serious
about blogging then I would strongly recommend that you use the
best system that you can afford and that meets your needs.
I personally have used the "Moveable Type" stand-alone script
and although quite complex to install, I found it very easy to
use. My recommended choice of hosted blogging service would have
to be the
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