Blogging Defined, Briefly

The below is a work in progress. I will add to, as I think of things, and would appreciate any others (perhaps better explained) should anyone wish to comment. 

 

Address

The URL or address of your blog is normally your blogname, and the service provider’s name ie http://yourblogname.typepad.com or my own example http://scrapability.squarespace.com where squarespace is my service provider. Remember this, when coming up with a name, else the full address might end up quite long. Or consider purchasing your own domain name and rerouting this to the hidden real blog address ie I could purchase www.scrapability.com (if it were for sale) and reroute this to this blog address - which would remain http://scrapability.squarespace.com but you would only ever see the “scrapability” address. 

 

Archive

- all blog systems provide at least a basic automatic archive of your blog or journal entries. For many free services, these are archived as monthly links. After your first month of blogging, the first archive should automatically appear in your sidebar. Most services also allow some customisation of your archives - sometimes into weekly, or even daily archives, last five, or by categories also. Some provide the archive in a format like a little calendar on the sidebar - with a link on days where you have written a blog.

Atom

A format for your XML Feeds posted from your blog to allow newsreaders to subscribe or syndicate your blog content. See RSS, XML and Feeds also.  

 

Banner

- most bloggers get around to wanting to place a graphic with the blog title  on top of their blog - this is the banner. Many blog services and templates allow for this graphic, but ensure you know the correct size to create it in. Other community sites don’t allow for banners.

 

Blog

= WeBLOG - a weblog or blog is normally defined as an online diary or journal. This is based on an actual written diary, but online blogs have matured into much more than that - they now accomodate not only the textual diary-like entries, but images, galleries, content management systems, catergorisation, search mechnamisms, can include document and video inserts and be themed with banners, and other blogware. See also Scrapblog and Journal

Blogger

= someone who blogs. This also happens to be the name taken by one of the best known and free blogging services around.

Blog Carnival

= an event on a topic for bloggers. Blog Carnivals are normally run on one topic, by one organiser blog - as a participant you can sign up. Then your blog articles on that topic during the event should provide links to other bloggers participating in the carnival also.

Want to know more about blog carnivals? Check out the FAQ at the Blog Carnival Site.  

BlogDay

= August 31st every year. On BlogDay,  you as a blogger should post five new links to new blogs you’ve discovered, preferably on a different topic than yours, or with different viewpoints. On this day, you can surf the blogging net, and find great new links.

Blogroll

= a list or roll of blog links.  

Blog Service

= The organisation that provides the blog system you use, often associated with server space for files. You normally hold an account or register with these services to provide you with the basic blogging software to create and maintain your blog account with.

Blog Site and Blogsite

Blog Site = a blog website. This name is also the legitimate name for the URL for your blog. Blog as in the Journal itself. Blogsite (one word) is something more than a simple journal or blog. This is a website which aside from having a blog internally, may also have many other features similar to many websites.

This Scrapability website is an example of a blogsite.  Alongside the blog(s) themselves - I have a few, but the main one is the Scrap Rants blog which has an URL of - http://scrapability.squarespace.com/scrap-rants/ It is the Scrap Rants blog which is a Blog Site, and from here you will be able to pick up the XML Feed for the blog itself. However, Scrapability has a common URL - http://scrapability.squarespace.com/ for the entire Blogsite. Although Scrapability does not have a feed (you get those on blog sites individually), it does have several other pages within it providing multiple features - galleries, large links pages, separate articles and downloads separate from any journal entries.

 

CMS

= content management system - many more featured blogging services provide a CMS to allow the user to enter content and format this in an easy manner, without having to delve into scripting with HTML. CMS features normally allow for some template customisation - the look and feel of the blog can be set by the user to some extent.

Comments

- readers normally have the ability to leave a comment on your blog entry. Some bloggers take this feature off, possibly because they have been comment-spammed by people sending out comments with links etc through them. The majority of blog services now have management of comments and security features for this, allowing you as a blog writer, to take comments with security fetures to validate they are from a real person, or to disallow anoymous comments. Comments are what creates the virtual community of blogs - people leave behind their own blog links and email addresses as an invite to visit themselves also.
 

Copywrite

- consider the copywrite of your content. Do you want anyone finding your blog or website to be able to use your blog content, including images, anywhere? If not, ensure you label the blog with a copywrite notice - this can normally be put in the footer of the blog so that it appears on every single page. If you want to allow some type of sharing, perhaps with communication to yourself, take a look at the Creative Commons Licences - link here. Additionally, consider the copywrite of any images not created by yourself, particularly around blogware ie if you use a digital designer’s banner and sidebar elements - remember to credit them, if the terms of use allow personal use like this.

Different Types of Blogs

• Photoblog  = a Blog mostly containing photographs.
  
• Vblog = Video Blog - there are now services which allow the capturing and posting of video footage from digital camcorders or even mobile phone videos and posting onto blogs.
• Mblog = Mobile Blog - several services provide the ability to blog using your mobile phone - including writing the blog entries (keyboards would be good here!) and reading the mblog service on your phone also.
• Glog = First Person recording of an activity - the person blogging is experiencing the activity as he/she blogs about it. If I were to do a blog during a scrapbooking retreat, this would be a good example of a Glog.
• Podcast = audial blog, normally downloaded via a blog subscription, or places like ipodder. Podcasts are increasingly popular now, as brief soundbites, sometimes just commentary, and sometimes with music. Also known as Audioblogs, although some podcasts can now include video footage as well.
  

Excerpt

- many blog services allow you to indicate an excerpt from your full blog entry. Normally this should be the first paragraph or sentence to the full entry. Once selected, when you post the entry it will appear with only that excerpt and a “read more…” or similar link at the bottom. The reader can then press this to bring up the full blog entry. Make sure your excerpt provides enough information to make the reader want to read more of your entry.

Feeds

= Blog Feeds. The XML-based file in which the blog hosting software places a readable version of the blog so that it may be “syndicated” for further distribution on the web. Formats such as RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file. See RSS, Atom and XML.
 

Hot Link

= normally a big no-no in the world of websites. Hot linking is when you directly insert a link to a file held elsewhere (and not by yourself). When the viewer clicks on this hotlink (it can be an image also) they download that link or file - from the initiating website. They therefore draw on that website’s bandwidth and not your own. With blogging, however, some websites encourage hotlinking - particularly for tiny images. This might happen when someone hosts a web button on their own site, and gives you the URL to it. Once you insert this html into your sidebar, for instance, then the button and link to their own website will appear. This means you don’t have to download the button and host it on your own server. A lot of blog sidebar buttons, and toys (such as clocks, slideshows, statistic bars etc) operate in this manner - allowing you to hotlink directly to the image without having to download it.

Journal

The journal is often the part of the blog that many people think of “as the blog” - this is the text (and image) entries which have the time and date put onto them, and appear in archives later on. This is the actual web-log. But because a blog service now has much more going on with many on them (ie photo albums / galleries / other pages etc) the term journal and blog sometimes get a bit muddy. A Journal or Blog entry can also be called a Blog Post, Blog Article, Blog Entry

Lurk(er)

A Lurker is also known in the community forum arena. This is a person who reads your blog, but doesn’t comment. The vast majority of your blog readers will be lurkers.  You will see this with many stats records. This is not something which needs to be taken personally - many readers read several blogs, and only leave comments when they feel they have something to say.

There are some blog ethics however, which suggest that if you are a viewer of a blog, and are asked to comment by the blogger, then you should, and additionally you should also always comment with at least a thankyou, if you happen to download something gifted to you from a blog - a freebie download for instance - which you might find many times on some digital scrapbook designer’s blogs. 

Permalink

= Permanent Link. An individual URL to one blog post or journal entry. Use this to link exactly to that post. For my own blog, Scrap Rants, you can find the permalink in the address bar itself. The permalink for a typepad user can be found by clicking on the blog article link at the bottom entitled “permalink”.  

Profile

- most blog services allow you to setup a profile for yourself as the blogger, often with a little square thumbnail photograph or image. You can normally provide a paragraph of blurb to explain yourself, who you are etc.

RSS

= Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (the first is the most common interpretation) - this is one of the means that your blog entries publish to the web (in XML format). Many newsreaders and aggregators out there can pick up on your blog’s RSS feed and know when a new entry has been made. Many readers can subscribe to this feed. I would normally recommend you ensure this is turned on for your blog - unless you want it private. See XML and Atom and Feeds also.

 

Want to Know more about RSS - then check out this link - RSS for Dummies, written by Scott Hendison - the article explains RSS in simple terminology with a whole heap of links to go off to, for more information if you want it.

 

Feedburner also does a good article explaining RSS in layman’s terms, including reading and syndicating to feeds. 

RSS Reader

An RSS Reader or News Reader is a tool to allow you to read in syndicated feeds. Most nowadays can read both RSS and Atom formatted blog feeds. Perhaps the most popular desktop tools for this may be FeedDemon (Windows) and NetNewsWire (Mac OS X). Many online services are extremely popular for this, with the benefit that you can check your blog reads from anywhere on the internet (and sometimes mobiles also). NewsGator, Bloglines, and new RSS content capabilities in My Yahoo! are probably the three best-known examples of web-based feed reading services. (See my own Bloglines Tutorial here in the ScrapBlog Series)

Scrapblog

- the term widely used for a scrapbooker’s blog. The term started to be used by several scrappers a year or so ago, but has lately been taken up by a couple of companies providing blogging services. See also Blog

Search Engines

Search Engines love Blogs. The constant content updates, links and feeds from a Blog Site mean that search engines often list blogs in the top of their listings (which are often based on content updates). There are now many specific blog search engines and directories setup to find blogs for you.  

Security

- security of your personal information. Although I talk about all the security options available in the Evaluating a Blog Service article, it is worth pointing out a general security issue here. A blog site is a website, and can be found by many internet browsers. If you are unhappy with having photographs of your child in the hands of strangers, don’t post them up there. And no matter what - do not put up personal addresses or other details allowing you or your family members to be located from your blog. Additionally, don’t use your normal family email address as a contact address from the blog. You could find yourself spammed. Instead, open a free internet based email account (google mail, yahoo mail, hotmail etc) especially to receive blog-originated emails.

Sidebar

- the templates for most blogs provide one (sometimes two) sidebar areas - normally a profile, your archived blog entry links, and an area for other links are supported through this sidebar. The sidebar is obviously your main navigational area around your blog. Links and sections within it will guide the viewer through your blog, the archives, and additional pages.

Spam

Just like email, blogs can be privy to spam comments - if you have not turned on some security precautions available on most commenting systems, some people can send out multiple comments (normally full of rubbish url links) to blog addresses and these are accepted. There are normally ways to prevent this spam with filters, security settings and by moderating your comments. See Security. 

Want to know a bit more on spam - then check out the explanation on spam on the Blog Wikipedia. And just for something interesting to read, this link will take you to an Interview with a Link Spammer, who happens to live in London, and spam your blogs all day.

Spam Blog

= not to be confused with blog spam, which could affect any one of us. A Spam Blog is a blog populated with no fresh content. There are many blogs out there which do this, using other people’s content or pure advertising after searching on the topic. There are many scrapping related spam blogs out there, often written in some iffy English, with lots of advertising links on this. Another term for a Spam Blog is Splog

Another more legitimate form of this type of blog is the Fishing or Feed Blog - where people’s content feed is syphoned in and reformatted as a blog on the topic. Provided the content is credited and linked to the legitimate originator, many feeder blogs like this get away with it. Some content providers don’t even mind their own content appearing in feeder blogs like this, as it’s another way of getting their message out there.

Stats

= Statistics. Most bloggers become obsessed with their website stats - how many visitors they’ve had, even what countries they come from. There are quite a few free stats counters available out there, to be inserted onto your blog with a bit of html (given to you by the stats service), or many paid-for services provide you with all kinds of statistics in the management or administration area for your blog.

Syndication

A syndicated feed from a blog is one with an XML feed - either RSS or Atom. This allows people to subscribe to the feed via an RSS or Feed Reader.
 

Template

- Many blogging services provide some templates for your look and feel of the blog. For some paid-for services, you can then customise these template colours, sidebar spaces etc. Others are not changeable - you will notice that with some free services you will get to recognise the few templates provided and used by the bloggers with time. Templates - header areas, sidebars, colour-scheme, fonts and titles for sidebars can sometimes be found online also, and are sometimes referred to as “Blogware”. Do a search for blog templates and you will find many designers providing these for popular blog services which allow custom templates - sometimes you can download these free, other times you will need to buy these. You will also have to host all the image files for these custom templates somewhere.

Thumbnails

- the smaller images often used on web pages, and hopefully your blog pages also. Many blog services now provide easy tools to create thumbnails out of your larger images perhaps uploaded to a photo album or gallery. Thumbnails can also often provide a URL link - once clicked on the original image could be opened in a separate smaller browser window, or the clicker could be taken to a different page, gallery page, or even a different website.  Thumbnails are obviously the way to go, to ensure that your blog pages don’t take too long to download in a browser window because you’ve inserted a large jpeg image.

Trackback

A system allowing the original blogger to see if someone has posted about their own blog entry, referencing to the Blog URL. A trackback works with a ping - which leaves an alert or reference to the new blog entry on the original blog’s entry. Typepad allows trackback features, as does Squarespace. Trackbacks, if turned on, allow a blogger to know when someone else is talking about their entry, without that second person having to log a comment against the original post. 

Troll

A commentor on a blog who has a main mission to incite negative comments, and flamewars. This term has since been picked up by community forums also. The best thing to do with a troll comment is to simply delete it - it’s your blog, afterall, and you get to decide what comments you are happy with. Many blog services can log the troll’s IP address also, and you can add this address to a list of unwanted commentors, stopping them from doing it again. See comments also.

WYSIWYG

= What you see is what you get - many CMS systems provide a WYSIWYG editor in the journal module - these allow you to enter and format text, images and links in an easy manner, similar to a word processing application. This helps in not having to use html or similar web-based languages to enter blog entries and inserts.

XML

= Xtended Markup Language. This is the language used to  convert your blog content into something which can be read easily by many other computer programmes, internet browsers and specifically, the news readers you want to publish to. XML is the format used by Blog Feeds, either in RSS or perhaps Atom formats. The XML File is also often the way that a blog can be extracted and backed up for yourself, and also imported into a new blog service should you wish to move services. See Feeds, RSS and Atom.

 

LINKS:

• RSS for Dummies
• Spam explained on the Blog Wikipedia
• Interview with a Link Spammer
• FAQ at Blog Carnival
• Feedburner’s Article on RSS and Syndication.