What is a blog?
Posted on July 16, 2008
Filed Under Blogging |
Well the name is derived from two words “web” and “log”. It’s basically a website that’s like an online journal and you’ll usually find the entries arranged in chronological order with the most recent at the top.
An entry or article in a blog is usually called a blog post, or post, and the act of writing for a blog is called blogging, and you are called “a blogger”.
I’m using this blog to document what I’m doing to implement my plan to use the internet to make some extra money - mainly by affiliate marketing which I’ll explain about another time, but you could use it for almost anything - you could have a family blog to keep your relatives all over the world in touch with what you’re doing; you could use a blog to write about your hobbies or interests, or if you’re an organisation you could use it as a way of keeping your customers and clients up to date with your business and industry.
I can waste hours of time reading blogs - here are some of the blogs I read - normally you’ll find communities of blogs about the same topic all linked together - so one blog leads to another, and then on to another etc, etc.
So when I found out about blogs they sounded like just the thing I was looking for and I thought “I gotta get myself one of those.”
So I can hear you asking - how do I get a blog?
Well first up you need to have a proper think about what you want a blog for. I knew straight away that I wanted to use my blog as a way keeping my work on track, and that by sharing my experiences (myonlinestory!) I could also use it to help other people interested in doing the same thing. I had also learned it was possible to make money from blogging. This lead me to decide that I wanted to host my own blog with it’s own domain name.
If that sounds like a bit too much trouble there are a few ways to get started for free. I’m not going to recommend which one to use, but I will point you in a few directions and you can decide which one suits your needs best.
There’s blogger.com and wordpress.com which both offer the platform, the domain and the hosting for free. You will find yourself slightly more restricted with layout and design than you would if you hosted your own plus your url for your domain name will look something like this www.yourdomainname.wordpress.com, as opposed to www.yourdomainname.com
If that’s not an issue you can get yourself up and blogging in a matter of minutes. One thing you should bear in mind though is that it might be more complicated to transfer your blog to it’s own domain name and hosting at a later stage.
So think very carefully before you leap into the blogosphere. Best to get it right at the outset.
You will see from my own domain name that I have chosen to host my own and mine is powered by Wordpress.org(this is not the same as wordpress.com). I find this easy to use and will admit I haven’t played with any others. I have however read loads of blogs in my time and they use various platforms including joomla, movable type, typepad, B2evolution, Expression Engine and Type Pad.
So there’s no excuse not to blog now is there. So if you want to get blogging today you can - if you think you might be in this for the long term then consider getting yourself a webhost and a domain name. I’ll be letting you know what I found out about hosting and registering domain names in another post at a later stage.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy these!or read my previous post: Hello world
or read the next one: Install WordPress on your own PC - try before you buy (your hosting)!
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