What is a blog?
I’d like to share some information about a ‘blog’ or ‘weblog’. The biggest discrepancy comes when people think a blog is something different than a website. That is a misunderstanding. A blog is simply another type of website.
What is a blog? Short for weblog, a blog is simply a website of journal entries posted at pretty regular intervals.
Without going into a bunch of historical and technical data, weblogs have quickly revolutionized the way people post content on the web. What became increasingly popular as a personal journal online through xanga.com, blogs have now turned into a phenomenon. Except now, they are not just personal diary entries. People blog about anything. We have corporate blogs, picture blogs, sports blogs, porn blogs and the list goes on and on. The page you are reading right now is a part of my blog at jmski.com.
I did have a traditional webpage where I tried to post regular updates about what I was doing; however, the pages get really long and were hard to keep track of, much less navigate with ease. With the advent of popular blogging technologies (I use wordpress), now I can keep my website fresh with content and have it ordered in a journal type style.
If we were to create a basic feature request for a blog, it would look something like this:
- Ability to update a website frequently with content
- Ability to allow readers to subscribe and/or receive updates whenever content is added or changed
- Ability for readers to search and browse through previously posted content
Do you need a blog? Well, if you answered yes to those three questions, I would advise you to consider it.
The topic I will post in the next few days will be “How do I setup a blog?”
For more reading, I suggest the wikipedia article on blog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog
