Blogging
If you're new to the blogging world, you may still be wondering what a blog is.
You may even feel a little embarrassed or even ashamed when others talk about blogs and you don't really know what they're talking about.
The word "blog" is short for "web log", and it's a term that was created for a special kind of
website that essentially helps you write down a "log" of different stuff. It can be anything.
A few years ago a lot of people used blogs as a type of online journal where they could write down whatever happened in their lives, and share it with their friends and family.
This is still true today. But blogs are now the most popular type of website on the Internet, both for Internet users and for the search engines.
People now use blogs to publish content related to any and every topic you could possibly imagine. If you are looking for celebrity gossip, you will find more gossip than you can deal with. Search for investment advice, recipes, girls soccer information, bee keeping hints or marketing training and yu will find helpful blogs.
Almost any topic that you can think of is out there in form of a blog.
A blog is really just a website that lets you easily publish content whenever you want and allowing other people to interact with your content by writing comments in response to whatever you published.
In a way it's quite different from the old type of websites that do not change their content
very often as a general rule of thumb. Blogs are much more fluid and interactive than the usual old-fashioned websites.
More importantly, they are much more effective!
Some reasons why blogs have become so popular lately:
1. Blogs are so eas to set up. You don't actually need any technical knowledge such as html programming to be able to set up your own blog. If you can click a few buttons and type then you can set up your own blog in a very short period of time.
2. Blogs are very cheap to set up. You can even set up a free blog.
3. Blogs are interactive. Whenever you visit a blog, after you have read the original post by the publisher of the blog, then you can submit a comment expressing your own thoughts on what the blog post was all about.
When other people join with comments things can get very interesting, and you could end up with a very informative collection of input from people around the world.
Because this interaction creates a bit of 'drama', people tend to get attracted to it and want to participate themslves.The more people who participate, the faster the world of blogging explodes.
4. Blogs are popular with the search engines because they get updated with new content so often resulting in the search engines listing them very high up on their search results.
This means that blogs are likely to get more traffic than normal 'stagnant' websites. People are able to find them more quickly in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
As a website owner, which would you prefer? A stuffy old static website that seldom changes and does not get ranked very high in the search engines, or a vibrant, interactive blog that gets listed in the major search engines?
If you prefer the blogging platform keep reading.
Wordpress! is an award-winning CMS, which enables you to build Blogs, Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Wordpress the most popular blog software available. Best of all, Wordpress is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
There are hundreds of Wordpress themes online waiting to be paid for. Some of them are worth it, some are not. Here you can check out some free Wordpress themes.
A Cool Tip
Go to MyBlogLog.com
After you have signed up for MyBlogLog, you can add a widget to your blog. First set up an account. Then you can get a widget code which allows you to see the pictures of bloggers who have visited your blog.
Just copy the code and insert it into the "Widgets" under the
"Design" tab in your WordPress dashboard.
Blogger.com offers free hosting on their server
Click here to read the instructions that you'll need to get started.
