Datasheet

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Part I: Getting Started with Blogs
Regardless of what the blog is about or who writes it, every blog features
✓ Frequent updates: Most bloggers update their blogs a few times a week;
some bloggers even update them a few times a day. Blogs don’t have
a schedule for publishing; the blogger simply updates the blog when it
seems appropriate.
✓ Posts or entries: Each time a blogger updates the blog, he or she creates
a blog post, or entry, that he or she then adds to the blog.
✓ Permalinks: Each time a blogger adds a post to his or her blog, that post
appears on the blog’s home page. At the same time, blog software cre-
ates a permalink page to contain only that blog post and its comments.
(The word permalink is short for “permanent link.”) Permalink pages
are a big part of why blogs do so well with search engines — every post
adds a new page to your Web site and provides another opportunity for
your blog to come up as a search result.
✓ Chronological order: When a blogger writes a new blog post, that post
appears at the top of the blog’s first page. The next time the blogger writes
a post, it shows up at the top, and the older posts move down the page.
✓ Comments: Most (though not all) blogs allow readers to leave
comments — short text messages — in response to blog posts. Comments
really differentiate a blog from most Web sites by encouraging interaction
and conversation.
✓ Archives: Because blogs are updated so frequently, bloggers often sort
their blogs into a date-based archive so that readers can find older infor-
mation easily.
✓ Categories: Bloggers can also sort posts by subjects, or categories,
which allows a blogger to blog about a number of different topics and
lets readers focus in on the topics that most interest them.
Blog anatomy: Dissecting a typical blog
In this section, I give you a tour of the usual blog elements by using baker Rose
Levy Beranbaum’s blog, Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum (www.real
bakingwithrose.com). This blog is unusual because although Rose writes it
herself, it’s sponsored by Gold Medal Flour, which paid for the blog to be built
and handles any maintenance costs associated with running it. It still has all
the usual features that I discuss in this section, as shown in Figure 1-5.
Rose’s sponsorship is unusual, but the format of her blog isn’t. In fact, most
blogs — no matter what topic they cover — look quite similar because the
elements of one blog are common to all blogs.
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