Blogging for Newbies - What is a Blog?

"Blog" is the well-known abbreviation for "Weblog," which means exactly that - A log of something on the web. This "log" could be of personal nature or business. It can really be about anything you want it to be about.

The difference between a blog and a normal "static" Web site is in the structure and the way in which content is published to the World Wide Web in turn providing more frequent content updates, which both search engines and humans enjoy.

Some blogs, which are run off of unique platforms, can be somewhat hard to recognize, but a good majority of blogs can be recognized by a combination of the following:

1. - Several different topics on the front page with the newest being first.

2. - Time and date posted on every topic.

3. - A list of categories, normally in a navigation menu to the far right or left, which contain several "posts" related each category.

4. - An option below each post where viewers can leave a comment.

A blog or "weblog" can be thought of as an online journal. As stated before, this "journal" can be for personal use or business, which ever you prefer. It could be a personal journal or a business related site, which provides tips, tricks etc.

With a normal "static" Web site, you must first connect to an FTP account, design the page in an html editor, write the content, create a page name etc. then upload your new page to the remote server, which holds your Web site. Once this happens the page is available, but not seen until it is linked to from another page on the Internet. As you may notice, it is somewhat of a grueling process and it isn't very quick or easy.

A blog on the other hand provides an extremely easy means of publishing content to the web on a frequent basis. There is some initial setup at first if you want to host the blog on your own domain (recommended) but once that's done everything is relatively easy.

Now that you understand the long process of publishing content to the web with a normal "static" Web site, let me explain the process of using a blog.

To publish content to the WWW using a blog (once it is setup,) you log into your control panel, usually linked to your page. Once logged in there is a "write post" link, which you click. Now you just type in the title of the post and write the content. Choose the category, which you created and click "publish." That's it, all done!

As you can see the process is much easier than writing for a normal Web site, which provides a simpler means of providing quality content for others to view.

Not only is it easier, it is more "user-friendly." Since you can post more frequently, your site viewers are more opt to come back to see what your latest musings are. The Search Engines also love fresh content so they will come back more frequently to index pages that they can then provide to those who search for related terms in their search engines.