Blog Service

What is a Blog

A blog (or weblog) is a type of web site (or page) that is organised much like a diary or journal - short nuggets of writing added regularly as a running commentary on almost any subject. The amount of information on blogs is mind numbing. At the end of 2006, there were more than 50 million blogs, and such sites as Technorati and Google Blog Search were created to help users wade through them.

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents (also known as the blogosphere) such as Blogdigger and Technorati. Technorati provides current information on both popular searches and uses tags to categorise blog postings.

Blogs typically report and comment on topics of interest to the author and are usually written and posted using software specifically designed to facilitate blogging. Blogs include hyperlinks to other web sites and often photos, video clips and the like.

Essentially, a blog is a chronologically organised site with the latest entry appearing at the top of the page. It is updated by an individual (or a group of individuals) using these main items in each entry or post:

Main Body - where personal commentaries, ideas, and / or stories are typically written in the first person ('I').
Date / Time Stamp - to show the day and / or time of the entry.
Title - to give a general idea or gist of what the entry is all about. However, this is not always used by all bloggers (people who keep blogs).

There are other items incorporated in various blogs depending on what each blogger may want in their own blogs. Optional items include: calendar, archives, comments, permalinks, blogrolls, RSS and TrackBacks amongst others. Some blog authors may opt to make use of add-ons and / or plugins to enhance their blogs.

Posts and comments are very easy to reach and follow. All the new browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 support the technology called RSS. RSS technology helps the readers by creating a button which enables them to see the last posts in a small window, without the need to visit the blog web page. RSS is very useful especially when the posts are sent less frequently. Then readers are simply informed if there are new posts without having visiting the blog.

Many blog sites offer an RSS or Atom syndication feed that provides headlines of their latest entries along with URL's to the content (please see our RSS Feeds service for further details).

Corporate / Business Blogs
A blog can be private, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a business or externally for marketing, branding or PR purposes are called corporate / business blogs.

Corporate / business blogs can be a very strong communication tool within or on behalf of a business community. Free from many of the constraints of traditional business communications, they can explore original issues and provoke thought amongst an audience that may tune out from other messages. Generally, anyone can write comments to and post in corporate / business blogs or simply anyone can write a new post.

This networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. This new balance of power, where consumers own marketing, is aptly named “Consumer Generated Marketing”. Blogs are not only business tools, they are also consumer tools that may help to promote companies who fulfil their promises or attempt to damage those who break them.

Marketers expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audiences. Once they find them, they treat them like VIP's, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer service audits etc.

The corporate / business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. It gives businesses an opportunity to show a different side that doesn't have to be all suits and ties. Corporate / business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the business site.

Although there are many types of corporate / business blogs most can be categorised as either external or internal. Below is a brief description of some of the most common types of blogs.

Corporate Internal Blogs
Internal blogs are in many cases good alternatives to meetings. People may not be able to attend and organise frequent meetings because either the distance of the meeting location or the availability of all the people at the proposed meeting time.

Since blogs are open to the community, the hurdle and hesitation of sending invitations to the exact / correct number of related people is removed. Consequently fewer people will feel that they are kept away from the decision making process. Since every post is open to the community, anyone can take part in the decision making process, simply by adding comments.

Corporate External Blogs
The primary function of business communications / public relations today is network building. External blogs are group communication tools that encourage complex and effective discussions and build connections between key audiences. Some businesses use these networks to persuade people to act, to respond to a crisis or to leverage market conversations and improve their businesses.

Other Types Of Blogs
There are various types of blogs, and each differs in the way the content is delivered or written.

Media Type Blogs
A blog comprising of videos is called a vlog, one comprising of links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumbleblogs.

Device Blogs
Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA is called a moblog.

Genre Blogs
Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs or legal blogs (often referred to as blawgs). While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog. A slog (site or web site log) is a section or 'slice' of a regular business web site, which is seamlessly integrated within the regular web site structure but is produced with blogging software.

Project Blog
A project blog is a type of weblog customised to record a project, or a deliverable task, with its goals, procedures and status changes. It has a “completed” state which puts an intended end to the blog. It is introduced to promote sharing of tacit knowledge by narratively recording projects' Research and Development process on the Internet.

Vlog
(Video Blog) A weblog or blog that includes video clips to be downloaded and viewed immediately or transferred to a portable player. Also called a "vog," "vid-blog" and "movie blog," the vlog can be exclusively videos with text used only for captions, or text entries may be included. A venue for people who like to remix audio, video and graphics in some artistic expression, as well as novice and experienced videographers and movie makers, the material is distributed in popular video formats such as Microsoft Windows Media, Apple QuickTime and Adobe Flash.

Autocast
Autocasting is an automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS Feeds. Autocasting software uses XML parsers, TTS (text-to-speech) engines (please see our Text-To-Speech Animation service for more details), and audio conversion utilities to convert text blogs into audio files that can be placed on a blog for download, synchronised to a portable audio device, or played on a desktop computer.

Blogcast
A blogcast is a portmanteau of two better known media types, the blog and the podcast, into a single web site. A blogcast is a podcast with an associated text summary, which can be indexed by search engines to make the podcast searchable. A 'blogcast' can also be and instrumental piece of music that would reflect part of someone's life, for instance a busy piece means a busy time. It can still be accompanied by text.

An interesting direction of development is an automatic generation of blogcasts. In that, a user creates a text-only version and converts it to text with the help of RSS-narrator.

Collaborative Blogs
A collaborative blog is a type of weblog which is written by multiple users. The majority of high profile collaborative blogs are based around a single uniting theme (i.e. Political affiliation, fashion, music or travel etc.). While every collaborative blog is unique they can usually be placed in one of two broad categories, invite only and open invite.

Invite Only Collaborative Blogs
An Invite Only collaborative blog is one in which a founder blogger personally selects a small group of co-bloggers, inviting them to contribute to his or her blog. The Invite Only blog typically focuses on a single common interest subject (i.e. politics, legal issues, financial issues or business issues).

Open Invite Collaborative Blogs
Conversely, Open Invite collaborative blogs allow any user to register for a blogging account, providing instant access. Open Invite collaborative blogs succeed on the basis that the community acts to weed out spammers and other troublemakers. Much like online forums the accessible nature of the Open Invite collaborative blog is protected by dedicated moderators and fellow bloggers who will act quickly to quell any signs of spamming.

Terminology

Blogrolls
From the American political term 'logrolling' - for supporting another's pet bill in the legislature in exchange for reciprocal support. When you hotlink to other blogger's blog (and / or other blogger's specific blog entries) in your blog, you are blogrolling. This is frequently reciprocal.

Permalinks
A unique URL assigned to a blog posting by blog or syndication software that remains permanent for that article. The permalink is made up of a base URL combined with elements such as date, time, names and numbers or just a unique number. Using an index, the site keeps track of the physical location of the article and converts the permalink to that address.

It is common to routinely move old blog postings and news articles to different parts of the site. Without a permalink, all external references on documentation and other web sites to these articles become invalid.

TrackBacks
A cross referencing system between blogs, when you make a comment on your blog about a subject posted on another blog, TrackBack is used to enable that blog to link back to your comment on your blog. It also allows a title and excerpt of the comment to be included with the link.

Both blogs must use blogging software that supports the TrackBack protocol. The TrackBack is initiated by selecting a link in your blog and filling in a title and excerpt. The software contacts the blog to see if it will accept a TrackBack.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogs

Blogs have advantages over more traditional ways of keeping in touch such as email and web sites, email messages could be too imposing or miss out key people who should be included. Web sites are a problem too, they demand that people visit them regularly to find out if anything has changed and require regular updating to avoid going stale.

These problems can be solved, by using blogs. Blogs let people know when a favourite journal is updated. What blogging and these notifications are about is that it makes it very easy to communicate. The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it.

The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities and other often unforeseen consequences. One area of concern is the issue of bloggers releasing proprietary or confidential information. Another area of concern is defamation. A third area of concern is employees who write about aspects of their place of employment or their personal lives, and then face loss of employment or other adverse consequences.

What we do for you

We will install blogging software with TrackBack on your computer so that you can create / amend and add entries and comments to your blog, this software will then enable you to upload your blog to your web space and consequently make it available to the blogging community.

We will provide you with a unique URL (web site address) that can be used to create a direct link to your blog, you can set this direct link up as a button, text link, or other type link on one or more pages of your site. You can also make the "Home" button that appears on your blog to link back to your home page, or any other page, on your web site. The net affect is your blog appears seamlessly integrated into your site, as if it were just another page.

At this stage and only if you require it, we will set up an RSS feed on your web site. so that visitors / customers can subscribe and be notified of changes to your blog (please note, there is an additional cost associated with setting up an RSS feed, for further details please see our RSS Feeds service).

We will then submit your blog to blogging search engines and directories. The added advantage to blogging is that search engines rate links backs to your site highly, the more people who link to your blog the more the search engines believes your site to be important and consequently they will rank you higher in their search results.

What we need from you

We will need to know what type of blog you require either a corporate / business blog or a personal blog, also will this blog be Collaborative Invite Only or a Collaborative Open Invite.

Also please review the different type of blogs you can have, you may feel that a particular type of blog, for instance a vlog, may be more appropriate for your business.

Please choose one of the Blogging Software products below. If you require help in deciding which Blogging Software is best for your business please contact Design Web Studio, we will help you decide what is valuable and relevant for your business.

The Products

RocketPost
The RocketPost blog software is the first productivity application for blogging, designed for serious bloggers and business users. Unlike low-end clients, RocketPost is a complete, standalone editor which puts you in control. It has it's own WYSIWYG editor, full local editing and full blog import. It works just like email, so you already know how to use it.

RocketPost reduces the pain of blogging with one-click Technorati, Flickr and Del.icio.us tags, built-in photo editing, instant photo albums, automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, drop caps, pull quotes and a running word count. It works with the most popular blogging systems as well as plain FTP space. It's fully multithreaded design lets you edit multiple posts and publish to multiple blogs at the same time, so it never slows you down.

b2evolution
b2evolution is an advanced blogging software product allowing you to run your own blogs and newsfeeds. It does basically the same thing most online blogging tools do, but it runs on your own web site.

The features in b2evolution include a calendar, search facility, image and file uploading plus the ability to add many unique plug-ins which can personalise your blog.

bBlog
bBlog is used by thousands of bloggers world wide and has not only the features you would expect from a modern blogging system, but also advanced capabilities including advanced comment spam prevention and threaded comments. Perhaps bBlog's most distinctive feature is that it is built around a templating system called Smarty, which makes customising your blog as easy as editing any web page, no programming skills required.

Features of bBlog include complete control of the way your blog will look and feel, a WYSIWYG editor, advanced TrackBack and Blogrolling plus the ability to add many unique plug-ins which can personalise your blog.

Blojsom
A Java-based, full-featured, multi-blog, multi-user software package that was inspired by Blosxom. Blojsom aims to retain simplicity in design while adding flexibility in areas such as templating. Blojsom has the ability to add many plug-ins, is able to run multiple blogs with a single blojsom installation.

Although Blojsom allows you to edit your blog from the web, you can also edit your blog using a blog client. Blojsom supports the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and parts of the MovableType API.

LifeType
LifeType supports multiple blogs and users, media management, generation of standard content, clean URL's and support for subdomains.

Writing articles is comfortable with the included state of the art WYSIWYG editor. Adding pictures and sound files (for podcasting) is just a matter of browse and click. The Dashboard provides you with all the information you need every time you log in. Recent articles, comments and TrackBack as well as brief statistics get you updated about your blog immediately.

Nucleus
With Nucleus, you can set up one or more blogs. If you want to, you can even show the contents of multiple blogs on the same page. Each blog has its own team of authors. Some authors will only have posting rights, others will be allowed to change settings for the blog as well. Since Nucleus runs on your own server, you'll be in full control. Network outages of centralised blog tools won't prevent you from posting. The way your Nucleus site looks is fully tweakable through skins and templates, and multiple CSS files. Next to that, the language used by the Nucleus admin area can easily be changed through language-files.

Additional features can be added through plug-ins. This allows you to have the features you want, without having the Nucleus core to become bloated. The Nucleus plugin interface offers plugin authors lots of flexibility.

Pivot
Because you place this software on your web server, you do not need any tools on your own computer, but you can use all of Pivot's functionality through your web browser. This way you can use your Pivot from wherever you like, once you have it up and running.

Pivot requires no additional libraries to run, nor any databases. And has the ability to build multiple blogs, a full set of templates, built in search function, WYSIWYG editor and IP-blocking to prevent certain people from leaving comments.

Serendipity
Serendipity is a powered blog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain an online diary or blog. While the default package is designed for the casual blogger, Serendipity offers a flexible, expandable and easy-to-use framework with the power for professional applications.

Casual users appreciate the way Serendipity's sophisticated plug-in architecture allows you to easily modify both the appearance of your blog and its features. You can install more than 120 plug-ins with just one click, instantly enhancing your blog's functionality. No need to edit code!

Likewise, one click installs any of more than 40 official templates, so your blog looks the way you like it.

Advanced users value Serendipity's 'Smarty' templates for combining simplicity with well-documented web standards. It makes minor modifications trivial, but provides the power to unleash your creativity and completely customise your blog.

WordPress

WordPress is a publishing software product with a focus on ease of use, speed and a great user experience. It comes with a great set of features designed to make your experience as a publisher on the Internet as easy, pleasant and appealing as possible. WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, or shared hosting account, which gives you complete control over the your blog. Unlike third-party blog services, you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your blog in case you need to. This also means that you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet.

WordPress uses user-levels to control user-access to different features, so you can restrict the ability of individual users to create or modify content in your blog, by changing their user-level. In an increasingly connected world, WordPress comes ready for TrackBack two very useful ways of connecting to other blogs, and to enable them to do the same.

WordPress uses templates to generate the pages dynamically. You can control the presentation of content by editing the templates using the Template Editor tool and the Template Tags. Every installation of WordPress comes with a WYSIWYG editor so you can edit all your templates and other WordPress related files, right in your browser without having to worry about downloading and uploading the files in order to edit them. Plug-ins extend the core functionality of your blog. A large number of user-developed plugins are already available and can be used to do virtually anything you want to with your blog.

ROCKETPOST BLOGS COSTS £110
B2EVOLUTION BLOGS COSTS £60
BBLOG BLOGS COSTS £60
BLOJSOM BLOGS COSTS £60
LIFETYPE BLOGS COSTS £60
NUCLEUS BLOGS COSTS £60
PIVOT BLOGS COSTS £60
SERENDIPITY BLOGS COSTS £60
WORDPRESS BLOGS COSTS £60