The Blog Works

Blogging is presently the most popular way for people to put content onto a website. To put it simply, a blog, short for weblog, is a website which has a simple interface whereby the owner can place content easily and quickly onto the site. No knowledge of coding or page design, no use of FTP clients or other special file transfer tools is necessary - it is as simple as typing up your content and clicking on a button to publish it to the site. Once posted, as this is called, the content appears virtually immediately.

One reason blogging has become so popular is because free blog hosting services, such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com, are widely available. Blogger is probably the most popular of the hosted services, providing a very simple interface, and a wide range of features for you to personalize your blog. If you have your own domain name and website, Blogger can also publish your posts to your own site. Wordpress is similar, but is perhaps even more suitable if you wish to publish to your own site. However, this does require a little more knowledge of website construction.

Other systems are available, such a Typepad, which requires a fee to be paid, and these are also well worth investigating for the features they offer. Most blogs typically contain text, but posts can also consist of graphics, photographs, sound and video. Many video blogs are constructed by linking to videos posted to

YouTube. The posts on a blog are usually organized chronologically, with the date and time of the post displayed, and the most recent post at the top of the page. As the number of posts grows too large to display on the main page of the blog, older posts are archived so that they can always be retrieved later via links called permalinks.

Most blogs have the facility for readers to post their own comments on the things discussed, using a simple interface provided by the blog system. The comments either appear at the end of the post, or are accessible via a link. While sometimes commenting is abused by spammers, and might then be turned off, the ability to comment and provide quick feedback is one important reason why bloggers so easily form communities around a particular topic.

So, what are blogs used for? In fact, a blog can be used to convey any type of information, from descriptions of your latest holiday, complete with snapshots, deep philosophical discussion, opinions you don’t mind airing in public, tutorials about how to do anything at all, to the latest products available from your business.

The blog post you are reading is part of a tutorial blog, The Blog Works. If you go to a reasonable mystic you will see a philosophical blog discussing issues of spirituality. Then, if you go to Mals Meanderings you will find the day-to-day ruminations of a small church pastor.

These are a few examples of my blogs, and on them you will find links to other blogs either I have made, or that I read regularly. These lists are what are called blogrolls, and are a simple, and largely automated way that you can place links to other blogs on your own posts. (more…)

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Welcome to The Blog Works!

The Blog Works is all about building a successful blog. Success is measured in different ways for different people:

You might just want to share your personal thought and discoveries as you journey through life, in which case you want a blog that is quick and easy to use, but which expresses your personality in its appearance. You may or may not be concerned with who or how many see it – it just needs to be there, with your thoughts, photos, music, whatever!

Or, perhaps you have a message that just must be heard. There are many blogs on the web that support some cause, or help to propagate an idea, whether it is political, philosophical or religious. They need as many readers as they can get, and the blog must communicate well and appear professional and convincing.

Maybe your blog is to support a business. Perhaps it is the business! Not only must it clearly display the product, but it must entice the reader to come back time and time again. Traffic is king, as the saying goes.

Then, some blogs are just for fun. They are like the huge laughing mouth at the entrance to St Kilda’s Luna Park – inviting everyone to come in and spend some time relaxing.

Whichever type of blog you wish to build, at The Blog Works we plan to point you at the best tools to acheive it.

• We’ll look at ready to go free blog hosting systems, as well as how to host a blog on your own domain.
• We’ll explore ways of enhancing the appearance and functionality of your blog with code templates, code tweaks, widgets, gadgets, adding images, favourite links, blogrolls, etc.
• A blog is primarily about content. We’ll look at how to write in ways that communicate effectively, and where you might find ideas.
• A successful blog needs traffic, so we’ll investigate how to get a good position in the search engines, which directories you can submit your blog to, and other communities of bloggers that might be interested in your writing. There are a host of online tools to help you in this.
• If you are interested in making money through your blog, we will look at the various affiliate and advertising systems that can easily enable this to happen. It is one thing to have ads on a site, but how do you get people to click on them? We’ll look at such things as ad selection, ad relevance, ad design and ad position. And how do you stop your blog from looking like a highway billboard?
• After all of this is in place you will want to know how your blog is doing, which is where analysis comes in. We’ll look at not only effective ways of measuring how many readers your pages have, but where they come from, what they are doing while they are there, and how they leave.

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or just want to talk about these issues, feel free to post a comment. And, since blogging is all about shared communication, we are happy for you to put your link in a comment, but please make it a comment and a link that is definitely relevant to the post and helpful to other readers. 

While we are talking about sharing, if you have a blog which you think is helpful to other blog developers, post its URL in a comment. If I like it I’ll mention it and put it in a blogroll. This will give you another link to help you gain visitors. A return link on your blog would be appreciated.

We hope you enjoy your use of The Blog Works, and find something of value to help you in your own blogging.

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