Nothing personifies the Internet's promise of easy and unlimited communication possibilities quite like the humble weblog. Never mind the millions of commercially driven website; what could be more creative than placing your own thoughts, feelings, art, rants, your own... whatever, in front of a potential audience of millions?
A Weblog or Blog is a frequently updated online journal, organized by date and containing whatever the person that creates it wants to put down. Essentially, blogs are simple non-commercial personal websites. Among certain sets, the blog has become almost as popular as the ever-present instant messaging services as a communication tool. Whether used as an online diary, a forum for political rants, or simply for stream of consciousness commentary on day-to-day life, a blog is an easy (and now well-accepted) way of communicating your thoughts and feelings to the world.
Like any other site on the Internet, a weblog requires an IP address (like 64.221.45.110) and a DNS name (like WWW.myblog.isnotreallyhere.org) in order to be visitable online. This means that a blog site needs to be hosted on a web server like any other website.
The major difference between blogs and websites is that blogs are generally single pages only, the majority of which is text. This means that they take up very little space on a given web server, and also means that they are very easy to create and update.
This flexibility has led to a multitude of free blogging services offering both hosting (some with ads, some without) and software to let you easily update your blog without HTML skills. Most of these services provide some sort of index to help you draw readers to your blog. And after that, you're on your own to write, or complain about whatever you like. Current mood: Caffeinated. Current music: Metric
Creating your own Blog
The first thing you should have in order to create your weblog is a plan of action. What are you going to write about? How often? Why would people read it, and do you care? This may seem kind of trivial now, but without such a plan, the chances of your blog lasting are next to none. Enthusiasm and focus are important here. If you are planning to communicate with friends through your blog, it's time to make sure they all have memberships to the service you will use.
Once you got your modus operandi set, it's time to think about where and how you are going to create and update your blog.
Let's start with a list of various free blogging software and services. After this, we will follow up with a tutorial on creating your weblog.
Blogger.com Probably the easiest to use of all the combination blog update/free hosting sites. One of Blogger's major pluses is its support for third-party blog sites, meaning you can set up and update a weblog on your own website using Blogger. You are not restricted to using their hosting service.
Livejournal.com : A blog site that offers free hosting and updating of weblogs using the built-in interface. Considerably more community oriented than blogger.com but less flexible. It allows message boards so people can respond to your posts on your blog.
Xanga.com : Free hosting blog site similar to livejournal but with a considerably busier interface and more options. Allows readers of your blog to comment as well as 'subscribe' to be informed when you update it.
The above are just some of the more popular free blogging services available. For a more complete list, try here .
