Blogs and Blogging Simplified

Blog is the short term for weblog. Weblogs originated in the late 1990’s and were used as a log or list of links to web pages the author visited and considered to be interesting or relevant. Each link included the author’s comments and thoughts on the linked articles. The trend soon caught on, as website administrators realised that this could be a quick and painless way of regularly updating their websites with information.

It was not long before software to support effortless weblog posting was developed. In so doing, today’s commonly used blog application was born. These day’s blogs are used in all sectors from corporations, to academia, and even in online social settings. Blogs have become more verbose and although they often contain links to other web pages, they are no longer merely a list of links. They are more like online journals, presented in reverse chronological order with the latest posting appearing first. There are no restrictions on what the author writes and he needs never be edited.
A good blog includes

Every good blog includes a few features: archives, syndication, blog-rolls, comments, pingbacks and trackbacks are probably the most important.

Archives are often found on the front page of a blog and are a collection of older posts. What’s cool about archives is that they allow the blog author to keep older posts on the website and to arrange them in an accessible manner. Articles in an archive can be arranged according to period of publication, (for example day, month or year), topic, author (in the case of many authors) or any other classification deemed relevant by the administrator.

The syndication process, allows readers of your blog to subscribe through RSS or similar technology, to automatically and regularly receive notification of any updates made to your weblog. They contain “feedreaders” which are designed to look for new information on specified pages and inform the user of the change in content that a particular webpage has undergone.

Blogrolls have replaced the initial intended function of weblogs. A blogroll consists of a list of links to other websites, blogs and news sites that are relevant to the subject of a particular blog. It also uses aggregation technology (like feedreaders) to “roll” the list of sites for new content.

Comments make weblogs really interesting. They allow readers to provide their various points of view, agree or disagree with the author and generally participate in the conversation. They are a great way of attaining feedback from stakeholders and many corporate bloggers use it as a sounding board for their thoughts and new ideas.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are quite similar to one another although they use completely different technology. Trackbacks were used first and allow users to reference another blog post, comment on it and inform the referenced blog that they have been tracked. Pingbacks allow for automatic reciprocal referencing but do not include comments. Both trackbacks and pingbacks are a bloggers way of referencing another blogger online. Online interlinking facilitated by trackbacks and pingbacks increases a websites search engine visibility.