A Blog is What?
For the uninitiated, here are a few Blogging concepts explained (there is an unashamed slant to the superior capabilities of WordPress 
).
What is a Blog
A Weblog (as it was called in the ‘early years’) is essentially a chronologically ordered group of articles. There were, way back, typically journal/diary type entries. As time went on the use of Blogs morphed and became extremely popular as they typically contained original content and were often opinions of the authors. Blogs often became focused on certain subject matter such as some of the very popular celebrity Blogs out there. The combination of lots of original content with fresh information being published frequently is the reason that Blogs often feature well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) of Google, Bing and other Search Engines.
In some ways Blogs are to the Internet like small business is to the economy; a breeding ground for ideas and innovation.
How Easy is it to Blog
If you can use a computer you will easily be able to Blog. Fortunately there are some excellent free Blogging services such as Blogger and WordPress.com so you don’t need to do much setup nor have a domain name. Just head over to one of these services and sign up and within a few minutes you’ll be able to have your first article (Post) live for others to view on the Web.
If your Blog becomes very popular and you require additional capabilities you can always move to a more serious Website using WordPress.org software where you may continue to Blog as well as have a more traditional Website at the same time.
The Difference between a Blog and a Website
As mentioned earlier, a Blog is traditionally a time-ordered series of Articles (Posts) where new information is added fairly frequently. A Website typically contains Pages and content is not published nor amended frequently (e.g a ‘Contact us’ or ‘About’ Page). There is absolutely a Place for both this static and more dynamic type of content and Matt Mullenweg and the WordPress team have developed an extremely capable product; WordPress meets the needs of the most serious Bloggers as well as the needs for most Websites.
An interesting quirk in WordPress is that it is still possible to only have a single author per Page or Post. This is a fallback to when Blog Posts were written by single authors. These days it is common to have multiple authors for Posts particularly for magazine type Blogs.
The Three Ps of Blogging
Here is a quick rundown of three common terms used in WordPress and other significant Blogging software (even although WordPress is now a CMS rather than pure Blogging software):
Post: This is often referred to as an article. It is a time-based entry and may contain text, video, audio, attachments or other media. Every new ‘article’ is published as a Post and it is usually possible for visitors to comment on Posts.
Page: This contains content and is usually static in nature and is not time-based. Page content is changed occasionally. Examples include a ‘Home’ and ‘Contact’ Page. It can become confusing as it is possible to have a Page containing Posts …
Published: This is simply when a Post or Page is made available for others to view on the Internet (or an Intranet). Much like a newspaper is published and others are then able to view the contents of the newspaper.
Hopefully you are now less in the dark in regards to blogging. Start blogging today; is free and simple to get started and is a lot of fun!
