There really is a "Blogging for Dummies"

For those of us who have not yet learned all there is to kow about this Web Phenonenon, there is help at last.

Brad Hill's Blogging for Dummies, Chapter One, "Understanding Blogging at Last," describes common elements of blogs and clears away some of the mysteries of blogging.

Blogging For Dummies
By Brad Hill

Common blog elements

• Chronological entries and archives would be enough for a basic blog, and indeed, a few blogs eliminate all other elements from their pages. (See the Russell Beattie Notebook at www.russellbeattie.com.) Most blogs, though, incorporate these standard features:

• Author byline: A byline above (or below) each entry is less important if you’re the blog’s only writer than in group blogs. Still, many blogs carry that byline as a default setting in the blog software.

• Permalink: Short for “permanent link,” this link takes the visitor from the index page to the entry’s unique page.

• Blogroll: The blogroll is not a requirement, but it is a tradition to list the blogger’s favorite blogs in a sidebar. The blogroll is usually common to every page of the blog, so visitors can see your favorite blog destinations no matter where they enter your blog. Blogrolls make the blogosphere somewhat incestuous, with many topical blogs all linking to each other. Having one’s blog included in a high-profile blogroll is an honor and can deliver lots of traffic to a previously little-known blog.

• Categories: Some blog programs allow the blogger to assign categories to blog entries. These categories are listed in a sidebar, so that visitors can restrict their reading to a category of interest. It’s not unusual for one entry to be tagged in multiple categories.

• Comments: Comments are written by visitors to your blog and are presented below your entry on that entry’s unique page. On the index page, a Comments link sends visitors to that unique page, scrolled down to the first comment. Many blog programs allow the comments function to be turned off, so visitors cannot talk back. Some blog experts believe that the presence of comments is a defining feature of a Weblog. I disagree with this restrictive view; I have operated nocomment blogs, and I visit some wonderful blog products in which readers can only read, not talk. But it is true that the blogosphere would be fundamentally altered if there were no comments anywhere. Comments are a crucial part of what I call the macrologue — far-flung group discussions across many blogs.
  

• TrackBacks: TrackBacks are related to comments but are trickier to understand. For now, know that TrackBacks offer a way to put a link to your blog entry on someone else’s blog. TrackBacks link blogs together in the macrologue.

Click here to see the entire chapter.

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