What is a blog?

I am sure many people are familiar with website but what about a blog?

Blogging still sounds alien to some. So what is this funny term called blog?

Blog is an abbreviation of the term “Web log” and coined to become the word “blog”. The idea of blogging is not new, infact it has been around since the nineties. Back then, The term blog refers to weblog and it is in every fashion not a commercial or professional site. It is more of the personal nature, for comment or web site material. Blogging was not well known back then and there were merely a handful of blogs in existence. By the year 1998, this term blog was starting to pick up pace, and as a result became a phenomenon. Once it became free to the public, it really took off and was a pastime that was enjoyed by many.The moment blogger was released in 1999 it became a huge success with the public. Now people are not restricted on what kind of weblog they make, fast-forward to the year 2000 and people are making as many as 300-350 new blogs daily.

There are many blogging platforms you can use. Most of them are free and some require a small amount of charges.

Here are some of the platforms that are available for you to use.

1. Blogger
Owned by Google and it is free to use. You can open an account with them for free at www.blogger.com. Setting up is quite easy and you should be able to get it done within few minutes.

2. Movable Type.
This is a business blogging platform by SixApart meant for large corporations with multiple users. Available at www.sixapart.com/moveabletype

3. LiveJournal
This is a personal blogging platform also by SixApart. You can get the LiveJournal account for free at www.sixapart.com/livejournal

4. TypePad
Entry level business blogging solution available from SixApart for $4.95 a month at www.sixapart.com/typepad

5. Wordpress
This is free for all to use. It comes with either free hosting or self-hosted. For free hosting, you can open an account at www.wordpress.com and your blog will be hosted free of charge. On the other hand, if you would like to explore and have more flexibility, you might want to host your own Wordpress blog on your preferred hosting company. For this, you can download your Wordpress from www.wordpress.org and good news, it is also free.

For myself, I prefer to use Wordpress. Although other platforms like Moveable type has it advantages, I believe Wordpress is still superior compared to others. There are a few reasons for these:

1. Wordpress is open-source and it is free. Don’t be mislead by the phrase, “Anything free is not good.” This is the exception.
2. It is constantly being developed and improved by hundreds of amazing programmers around the world.
3. The basic Wordpress software can be easily and greatly enhanced in terms of appeareance and functionality with third party add-ons which is also known as “Plugins”. And the good news is, most of these plugins are available for free too.

Gobala Krishnan, the Wordpress expert has written a guide called Wordpress Adsense System, which I strongly recommend to those who want to use Wordpress as a platform for their blogs.  He explained the way to go about setting up your own blog using Wordpress in simple non-technical terms. A must read for those who are seriously looking into mastering blogging.

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