Weblogging Basics
A “blog” is an online log of a person or group of persons. It works like a bulletin board or website. The blog can be easily updated, or posted to without the need to edit a webpage. The blog can be publicly available as a regular webpage, or be restricted as a private webpage. Blogs can have unlimited public members (they can contribute to the blog), or can have restricted members as well. It can be hosted on an organization’s website, or hosted off site.
Quick Facts
In a blog, you can:
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Add a link to anything
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Use the blog address as a link
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Date and time stamp the entries
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Archive postings for as long as you want
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Search the archives for topics
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Link to the poster’s contact info
Uses of a blog:
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Library News (specialized or general)
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FAQ’s (problem/solution)
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Reference questions and answers
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Continuously update an audience
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Store news (archive feature)
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Make it a discussion board (like a real and off time chat room)
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Make it a collaboration station (group projects)
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Have many specialized blogs for specialized audiences
3 ways to get started blogging:
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Offsite hosting and maintenance, low features, free
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Download software and host on our server, one? time cost and more features
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Create our own with in-house support, more expensive time and money, most features, our own look
Options for set up:
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Restricted or public posting option (send a blog that is instantaneously listed on the page)
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Registered posting (certain people can post a blog with administrative rights to allow a post through)- but public viewing
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Restricted or public access to viewing the blog (who can read what’s there)
Features to look for:
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Archiving
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Comments
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Email posting
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Limiting members
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Editing posts
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Private hosting
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RSS feed available
We will utilize two blogs that are hosted offsite: Yahoo! Groups and Blogger.com
Anatomy of a blog
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Post: a message sent to the blog
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Date Stamp: date/time of message posting
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Author: writer of the posting
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Comment: reply/ thread of discussion
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Owner: person who created the blog
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Member: those who are allowed to post to the blog
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Archive/ Messages: list of all the messages posted to the blog
Starting a blog:
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Blogger.com: You must join blogger.com in order to start a blog. After the initial registration you can start unlimited blogs
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Yahoo! Groups: You must join Yahoo! Groups in order to start a group. Even though this is called a group, it is set up with all the features of a blog. After the initial registration you can start unlimited groups
Administrator/ Owners tools:
Blogger- http://ksuseminarblog.blogspot.com/ 
The dashboard is where you store all of the blogs that you administer
1. Click on the cog under the name of the blog that says Change Settings
2. Settings Tab: Here are your available tools and what they do: Always SAVE SETTINGS after you change one of the following. You must then publish the blog to see the results
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Basic Decide if you want your blog to be listed in a public directory of blogs
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Email post links to other users
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Compose mode
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Publishing - find/change the web address of your blog
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Formatting - time zones/ date time format stamping, language, encoding
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Comments – choose the comments you would like to show or hide and who may post them; notification options
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Archiving – how often do you want to group your postings. This depends on how many posts you anticipate, you can change this later.
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Site Feed – this feature enables/ disables the RSS or site feed feature for your blog, and the url of this address
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Email – Do you want to allow members to email their postings to the blog instead of logging into Blogger to post? This is called the “MAILTO blogger address.”
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Do you want the blog to be emailed to you whenever a post is added? This is called the “BLOGSEND ADDRESS.”
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Members – this area allows you to manage the access of your members to features of the blog. You can “invite” members to join the blog, remove them from the blog and give them administrative access.
3. Template Tab allows you to add permanent links to the front page of your blog using HTML coding. You do not need to do this, it is an option.
4. View Blog Tab allows you to see the blog at any time during your editing of features
5. Posting Tab allows you to post to the blog while you are editing
As the editor/ administrator, you will also see a pencil after each posting and comment. This allows you to edit postings and/ or comments before they are published or even after. This is important if you are allowing people to email postings, or allow public postings.
Yahoo!Groups- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ksublog/
Email post to blog address: ksublog@yahoogroups.com
Moderator/Owner tools:
Click on "Management" to view your tools in the left bar
1. Pending Tasks tells you of any one who requested membership, or any postings waiting for your approval
2. Group Activity lets you monitor the members.
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Membership tells who has been invited, joined, and their information
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Messages tells who has posted messages and which ones
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Web Features tells if any file uploading/downloading has taken place
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Commands are invitations, administrations, rejections of members that have taken place
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Moderator Activity holds any changes you have made to the settings of the blog
3. Group Settings
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Many kinds of files can be stored on your group for members to access: files, photos, images, database tables and a group calendar with events.
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The left bar contains the places where you upload and store the files. Click on a type of file to load it into the blog.
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You can edit how members can access each feature by using Web Tools under Group Settings.
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Messages you can adjust the access to messages that your members have.
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Membership defines the categories of members and priveleges.
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Polls are a way to see how a group feels about something with or without identifying the respondants. It is also a way to start a discussion. The poll can be created and stopped according to the creator's wishes
Features:
Inviting Members
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Both Blogger and Yahoo allow you to limit membership and “invite” members to a blog. The email is like the one you received with instructions within the invitation. Each invite can only be used one time, and has unique address for the user when they sign up.
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For Yahoo!Groups, others can request membership and this email is sent to the administrator for permission. This can be used to limit public blogging of your site.
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Both sites will give a public web address to the content of your blog, the postings. However, it is somewhat unlikely that someone will try to blog you who is not invited.
Content: Content for a blog is up to the user. Links, photos, images and text are all examples of content suitable and supported by blogs.
Comments: Comments are a way to thread discussion topics, keeping the related topics together.
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Depending on the format, or template of the blog, there may be hidden comments-
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Blogger template for http://ksurefer.blogspot.com/ is an example of hidden comments. Our template indicates how many comments were made for a message to encourage clicking on it and reading the entire thread.
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Yahoo!Groups uses the Reply feature as in email instead of comments. This might be good for keeping the thread together, but it will also repost the first message as an email might do. This may become long, and you may have to resort to subject lines for continuity.
Searching Content or Archives
Yahoo! Groups allows archive searching by keyword.
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Click Home in the left bar.
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Scroll down to Message History
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Type your text into the text box before “Search Archives” and click the button
Blogger allows a Google search of your blog using the Blogger toolbar
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The Blogger toolbar at the top of the blog is actually a search and blogging tool. The search box can be used to find messages with keyword entries. I have found this to be inconsistent and not entirely accurate with some of my sample searching.
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Click in the box and type your search terms, then click the “Search” button.
The second feature allows you to blog any Blogger hosted blog with that BLOG THIS! Button (you must have an account to do so).
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Click “Blog This! And an editing window will appear.
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Make sure the title of the blog in the pull down menu indicates the blog you want to post (if you are a member of more than one blog through Blogger, all will be listed here).
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Type your message and click publish. Of course, your blog settings will determine who can use this. If you click this button and you are not a member, it will prompt you to do so.
Resources (free)
Blogger.com
Yahoo Groups http://groups.yahoo.com
Blog-City http://www.blog-city.com/
Word Press http://wordpress.org/
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Open source software, some support documents, upgrade notifications
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Download their software and manage it on your own server
Movable Type: http://www.movabletype.org/
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Download their software to your server
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Free download
Resources (not free)
Radio Userland: http://radio.userland.com/
TypePad.com: http://www.TypePad.com
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TypePad Blog Hosting
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Fee to host Blog hosting service with domain mapping
Grey Matter: http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/
Other Blog Hosting
PMachine.com: http://pmachine.com/
Xanga.com: http://www.xanga.com
BlogHarbor.com: http://www.blogharbor.com
SquareSpace.com: http://www.squarespace.com
More Reaches for Blogs
Washington Post.com Best Blogs of 2004 Winners: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/marketing/blog/?g
Bloggies 2005: http://2005.bloggies.com/
Weblogs.com: http://www.weblogs.com
Eaton Web Portal: http://portal.eatonweb.com
Bibliography
Bates, Mary Ellen. 2003. Blogs: My new addiction. Review of 1/2/04. Online 27 (5):64. Accessed through EbscoHost.
Manafy, Michelle. 2003. Blogged down. Review of 1/2/04. Econtent 26 (8/9):5. Accessed through EbscoHost.
Miller, Ron. 2003. Blogging for business. Review of 1/2/04. Econtent 26 (10):30-34. Accessed through EbscoHost.
Zuiker, Anton. 2004. Blogging 101: An introduction to reading and writing a weblog. http://www.tarheelbloggers.org/thb/resources/blogging101/index.html. Accessed 7/12/2004.
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