Obligatory Intro
I think it was at the birthday party of a close friend’s daughter that I first heard the word. It was at least a year ago, perhaps two. Boy did I think it sounded dumb. I had just mentioned my interest in online communications.
“Oh, do you blog?”
Blog? I just stared at her then leaned forward and said “Excuse me?”
“Blog,” as far as I knew, was the word “block” spoken by someone with a severe cold.
Finally I got out of her that she was talking about a web log, or weblog. Such a log is an online journal of sorts. It’s a reverse chronological listing of thoughts, opinions, observations, and favorite links. Your friend’s daily updated blog is a place to go on you coffee break to learn what books your friend is reading, or read her most recent rant about how her local sports team is being managed. Blogs are becoming more and more popular as people want to break out of their static homepages and express themselves on a regular basis.
I remember being a little annoyed. “Why do people have to make up these goofy words?” I thought. My initial reaction was a bit harsh. Sure, “blog” isn’t in the dictionary. But once three or four people know what you’re talking about, “blog” is much easier to say than “online journal” or even “weblog.” And, heck, weblog ain’t in the dictionary either.
It is thusly that I often sort out my own internal neuroses. Once they’d been dealt with, I was able to go ahead and admit I wanted to blog. And so I delved into the young world of online journaling.
Being a tech weenie, my pattern with most technology is to jump in the deep and RTFM (Read The “Friendly” Manual) later. Using this method you can either get yourself started at a basic level or get yourself into trouble. If you’re lucky, you do both.
Blogging can be done by hand, editing HTML every time you want to post your latest website discovery or gripe. But since this quickly becomes tedious there are a variety of tools to help you think more about your blog content and less about the technical details.
I got started at a basic level with a fairly popular, free blogging tool. Except for some small tweaking to my blog, I never went anywhere further than doing what constitutes the basics of nearly every blog: posting regularly my opinions, thoughts, and goofy links to other websites and news stories.
So it is as a “novice level” blogger (by my own estimation) that I approached O’Reilly & Associates book “Essential Blogging.”
The Book
The familiar O’Reilly publishers have added this book on blogging to the Web Administration subset of their copious technical help books. This book is intended for those who are completely new to blogging, and since what I already knew could barely fill one chapter I figured I was the target audience.
The list of authors on the book is long. Cory Doctorow, Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott & Mena G. Trott are listed on the cover. These folks are involved with high profile blogs and the development of popular blogging software, so you are getting the information from actors, not observers.
How it Begins
“Essential Blogging” begins with a description of the common elements of a blog and uses a number of popular blogs as examples to jumpstart the absolute newbie.
It quickly moves into lists of features that a blogger might desire, and breaks down what software supports each of those features. Even though the beginner may not immediately understand the implications of all of these features, this is a place that a learning blogger may return to as she learns more about what she wants to do with her blog. This part of the chapter becomes a jumping off point.
The Chapters
After that introductory chapter there are nine more:
2. Desktop Clients
- This chapter discusses tools that you run on your PC that can communicate with the server software you may be using to host your blog.
3. Hosted Blogging with Blogger
4. Desktop Blogging with Radio Userland
5. Server Blogging with Movable Type
- Those three chapters are introductions to three popular blogging systems that have slightly different approaches to the problem of blogging. There is quite a bit of detail here regarding what you need to get started, where to get the tools you need, the steps you’ll go through in installing your tools, and rudimentary tweaking, customizing and tips.
6. Advanced Blogger
7. Advanced Radio Userland
8. Advanced Movable Type
- These are aptly named, and deal with advanced details of the three blogging systems. Included are how to upgrade Blogger to Blogger Pro and what that gets you, comment systems, backing up data, themes and templates that change the look of your blog, incorporating parts of your blog into pages other than your main blog page, syndication, and other helpful issues.
9. Minimalist Blogging with Blosxom
- A chapter discussing a powerful, free blog tool that might especially interest those bloggers that also enjoy tinkering as programmers. And have the time, I might add.
10. Blogging Voices
-…which I will discuss later.
Like a Beginner
I think the best approach to learning blogging is to first get one’s feet wet. Following that philosophy, I think Chapter 3 should be of the most interest to the complete newbie. It describes how to immediately experience blogging using the free to use “Blogger” service. I thought it a little odd that Chapter 2 (which deals with certain tools that can help you if you already have a blog) precedes it. This is my main gripe with the book, and it’s a small one.
Chapter 2, though oddly located in my humble opinion, contained very useful information about blogging tools known as “Desktop Clients.” This was all new to me and revealed a set of tools that could enhance my blogging habit even if I decide to continue using the same system I do now.
The authors do not push the beginner toward any particular system. By stacking up the features of each, they assume you can make your own decision in that regard. This is an advantage of the collaborative nature of this book. The beginning of each of the “Blogging With…” chapters give you an idea what the requirements are for using each system. For instance, some blogging systems require you to find your own web hosting for your blog (a service you will have to pay for) while others include free hosting. You’ll weigh this and other factors in deciding which system is for you.
They do a decent job identifying some of the pitfalls you’ll encounter along the way. Since I was already familiar with “Blogger,” I recognized some of the snafus they described as problems I had already encountered, and they gave good advice for how to avoid or workaround those problems.
There are also side notes that acknowledge the fast-changing landscape of blogging by mentioning whether or not a fact given is likely to change in the near future. Unfortunately, they spend a few pages on a popular comment system called YACCS, which they suggest for use if you do not host your own blog. YACCS is the comment system I currently use, but it’s been closed to new signups for nearly two months at the time of this writing. They need a note there to suggest alternative systems.
Stacking Up
As someone already using the simplest solution, I’m looking at either upgrading my current solution to a paid version (Blogger Pro) or moving to a more complex solution (Movable Type, Blosxom or Radio Userland). This book describes in detail what I’ll have to do if I want to switch my blog to use Movable Type, and I feel I now have a clear idea of why I might want to do it and so I’m seriously considering it for the first time.
When I read a technical book it’s for one main reason: to save me time. If it’s going to save me time that I would otherwise spend gathering the information myself, or learning something by trial and error, then that book is worthwhile to me.
This book saved me time not only by acting as documentation and quick reference for blogging systems, but also by giving me a taste of systems that I will not be interested in using. I don’t need to wonder whether I’ve made the right decision if I have a better idea why I didn’t go with some other system in the first place.
Extra
Chapter 10, “Blogging Voices, ” is a collection of advice from people who run or have run successful blogs. On my first perusal of the book, I didn’t think this was going to be of much value. But this chapter makes a decent wrap-up. The advice gave me a few things to think about: why people blog, why I blog, what should go in my blog, how to make my blog thrive, and where I might want to go with my blogging. The tips and brief glimpses into the minds of other bloggers are like a little non-technical bonus.
In Summarry
If you are a complete newcomer to blogging, “Essential Blogging” will make those first steps extremely painless.
If you’ve been blogging at the most basic level (with Blogger, for example), “Essential Blogging” will give you some options to explore ways to expand your blogging capabilities, or touch up your existing blog.
If you’re already an advanced blogger (Using Movable Type, modifying templates, using a comment system, etc), there may be a few bits in here that are useful to you, but you’re beyond the bulk of what this book has to offer. Also, if you're interested in tools other than the most popular choices covered here (Blogger, Blogger Pro, Movable Type, Blosxom) you won’t need this book.
The book could not explain to me why the word “blog” still grates on me just a bit. But that won’t stop me from recommending it to people.
Links:
Chapter 6, "Advanced Blogger," can be read online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essblogging/chapter/index.html
My blog is "Aces Full of Links": (at theeye's request)
http://acesfull.blogspot.com/
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