General Characteristics

Jan 8, 2008 15:50 GMT  ·  By

Blogs are not a new reality for the Internet space. They are websites that show news or articles (postings) in a reverse chronological order. Usually, a blog could be created using any type of content management system, not necessary a specialized one, because blogs are mainly regarded as online diaries and this type of website could also be constructed with the help of static HTML pages.

The most used blogging application on a large scale is WordPress CMS (content management system). WordPress CMS could have also other directions of usage but its primary goal is to provide "a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability"(wordpress.org).

The free blogging service which is based on WordPress PHP/MySQL application can be found at wordpress.com website. You have access to the blog administration panel almost instantly. Here, you can manage various aspects regarding your website appearance and content (website layout and blog posts). For example, you are allowed to change and edit the default template, tag your posts, import the content of other blogs (such as Blogger, LiveJournal) into your WordPress blog. The disadvantage of this blog service is that it allows ads on blogs only if you upgrade to a paid version.

Another free popular blogging service is Blogger. It is provided by Google and allows you to include ads in your posts or blog. The best part in case of this service is that you will not need too much time to be indexed by Google robots and the blog elements (layout) can be redefined with the help of drag and drop actions in a WEB 2.0 style. The development of a blog is very easy, because the service provides many widgets and tools that reduce the time needed to perform certain actions, such as inserting RSS feeds, HTML and Javascript codes, links indexing and many more. Adsense Google ads can also be positioned inside a blog with a drag-and-drop widget.

Blogs with original content represent a priority for search engines in their indexing actions and, as a consequence, when you want a website link to appear in search results on major search engines, it is a good idea to include the desired link into a blog post and the time needed for indexing could be only 48 hours. Besides wordpress.com and blogger.com, other free and with an increased popularity are LiveJournal and MSN Spaces blogging services. It is recommended to test all of these services in order to select the one that is the most appropriate for your blogging needs.