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How Blogs WorkBlogs appear on the news pretty often these days. For example, a reporter is tipped to a story by a blog, or a blog reports another angle on a story. Blogs show up in magazines a lot, too. But there is a good chance you have never seen a blog (also known as a weblog) or experienced the blogosphere. What are blogs? There are now millions of them -- where did they all come from?
In this article, you will have a chance to enter the world of blogging. You will even learn how to create your own blog and publish it to the world. What is a Blog? One of the things that is so amazing about blogs is their simplicity. Think about a "normal Web site." It usually has a home page, with links to lots of sub-pages that have more detail. HowStuffWorks is like this, with thousands of information pages all organized under a home page. A small business site follows the same format -- it might have a home page and five or 10 sub-pages. Most traditional Web sites follow this format. If the site is small, it is sort of like an online brochure. If it is large, it is like an electronic encyclopedia.
A typical Web site has a home page that links to sub-pages within the site.
CNN.com, pictured above, is typical of this genre. The CNN site contains
thousands of articles all organized into big categories. The categories and all
the latest stories are accessed from the home page. A blog is much simpler:
Blog BasicsA typical blog has a main page and nothing else. On the main page, there is a set of entries. Each entry is a little text blurb that may contain embedded links out to other sites, news stories, etc. When the author adds a new entry, it goes at the top, pushing all the older entries down. This blog also has a right sidebar that contains additional permanent links to other sites and stories. The author might update the sidebar weekly or monthly. Basically, a blog is a lot like an online journal or diary. The author can talk about anything and everything. Many blogs are full of interesting links that the author has found. Blogs often contain stories or little snippets of information that are interesting to the author.
Even though blogs can be completely free-form, many blogs have a focus. For example, if a blogger is interested in technology, the blogger might go to the Consumer Electronics Show and post entries of the things he/she sees there. If a blogger is interested in a certain disease, he/she might post every news article and every piece of research he/she finds on the disease. If a blogger is interested in economic issues, he/she might post links to articles that discuss the economy and then offer commentary on them. There are people who use their blogs simply as a scrapbook -- a form of online memory. Whenever the author finds a link or a snippet of information that he/she wants to remember, it gets posted in the blog. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it is still useful to the author because the blog is a searchable electronic medium that the author can access with a Web browser anywhere in the world.
In other words, a blog can be anything the author wants it to be. The thing that all blogs have in common is the reverse-chronological ordering of entries. The Blogosphere and Creating Your Own BlogOne thing about blogs that is so fascinating is the interlinking. There are millions of people keeping active blogs, and bloggers often tend to look at other people's blogs. When they see something they like in their favorite blogs, bloggers will often link to and comment on it. All of this tight interlinking has created a phenomenon known as the blogosphere. The blogosphere consists of all the cross-linked blogs. Once you arrive at one blog in the blogosphere, it will often have links that connect you to many of the other sites in the blogosphere. You can bounce around in the blogosphere for years if you like that sort of thing. Many blog readers enter the blogosphere and find one (or a few) bloggers they really like. For example, you might have a blog you use to keep up to date on the latest technology, and another to keep up to date on the latest news. The blogger is acting a lot like a DJ on a radio show, choosing stories, links and/or snippets just like the DJ chooses songs. People who like what the blogger focuses on each day come back and read that blogger every day or so. Celebrities have also gotten into the act, creating blogs as a way to interact with their fans. Creating Your Own Blog I created Marshall Brain's Blog using Blogger. Creating a simple blog is free and only takes about five minutes. You enter your name, e-mail address and a few other pieces of information. You select "the look" (template) for your blog from a set of standard templates. Click a few buttons and you're done. Now you can add new entries to your blog. Basically, all you do is type in the entry and push the "post" button to post it. You can edit the entry as much as you like by clicking the "edit" button. When you are happy with the new entry, you push the "publish" button to make your new entry visible on your public blog. Linux Operations Linux is an alternate type of system that provides hosting for small businesses and companies that run Linux applications on their personal computers and laptops. The Linux-based platform is stable platform in the industry. The Linux operating system was developed by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to other operating systems. Most of its versions are free of costs. The most popular Linux software is Red Hat and Mandrake. Linux was only for professionals until a few years ago but the situation has changed. Many ’small businesses have switched to the Linux platform because of its open source architecture, meaning that users can structure the system to do what they want it to do. Web host providers are specializing in Linux servers and the demand for this type of interface has grown by 40% over the last three years. A Unix-based platform is one of the most reliable operating system that you can ever have. It has a better up time than Microsoft Operating Systems and hosting programs in Linux are more flexible. You actually can get ore from a Linux based server than other servers on the market. Linux supports a wide variety of application languages, more than any other operating system. The most common applications of such kind include C, C++, Shell, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and PHP. Databases available for Unix are mSQL and mySQL. The one you choose would depend on what you plan to do on the web and the host that you choose to park your web site. The Linux based system comes with its won web development module in some versions of Red Hat Linux that make web site creation easy as 1-2-3. FTP modules are built into the operating system to provide you with an alternative way to load the web site to the Linux host. Linux will become a major force in the future as more small to medium businesses turn towards its hosting platform. Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/linux-options-for-small-businesses-384941.html Tech Journal: How blogs have revolutionized the Internet In the "old" days of the 1990s and even the beginning of the 21st
century, Web pages were something updated by technicians and
designers: the products of geeks. Revenue was generated by
selling products or advertising - a system of "selling" content
for traffic. If someone wanted to make money with a Web site,
and they had special knowledge, they could write about this
knowledge and publish it on the Web, referring customers to
related products for a commission or advertising these products
to customers for a fee. It was a complex and time-consuming
process, but doable, especially in return for the potential
revenue.
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