Dear diary... JACKPOT! (blogger.com)

Name: The Duke

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Product:	blogger.com
Date:	28/10/05 (3095 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, customisable, easy to use

Disadvantages: Slow at times, hard to customise without a bit of tech knowledge, no criteria for browsing.

When talking about the phenomenon of blogging, most people instantly think of people writing an online diary or weblog. This is where the name 'blog' originated from web (from the World Wide Web) and log (as in keeping a log). It's not the hardest mouthful of words to pronounce, but it's been shortened to blog all the same.

Since the first 'blogs' appeared in 1994, the act of recording thoughts and experiences online has grown. Today, blogging is a huge internet phenomenon. The terms 'weblog' and 'blog' didn't appear until later, though it's been said that blogging has existed for much longer than that in various other guises.

There's much more to blogging than individuals writing down their daily routine in a diary-like way, though. Blogging is now seen as a viable way to spread information and more and more professionals are getting in on the act to report on areas that interest them. Blogging has now expanded so much that a blog can be practically anything you want it to be. It's not uncommon to come across specific 'topical' blogs.

Of the main blogging sites on the web, two immediately spring to mind: Blogger and LiveJournal. When setting up my own blog, I chose Blogger mainly because most of the blogs I'd read were hosted by that company and having browsed the site, I saw what was on offer and what could be done. Signing up for an account was easily done and it was only a matter of seconds before the account was active and I was ready to start.

Apart from the obligatory username, password and email address, it'll be necessary to think of a blog title. You can fill in some optional information to bulk out your profile and feel free to do so, but take care of the usual warnings about giving out too much information about yourself on the internet.

Your blog name doesn't have to be unique, so if you want to call it "Jim's Blog" then you can. Once that's done, you're presented with a few templates for presenting your site. If you're familiar with HTML, then you can alter this at a later date to be something that suits you better. There are also plenty of templates on the web to be found. Typing "Blogger templates" into Google should list more than a few sites with extra designs to choose from.

Once your basic blog is set up, you can either launch straight into posting your thoughts onto the web or have a fiddle around with the settings in the 'dashboard'. It's worth spending a bit of time in here to set things up properly. At the very least, if you want visitors to leave comments on your submissions, then enable the "word verification for comments" option as that will save you being spammed with nonsensical comments asking you to take part in some daft scheme or other. It's the blog version of Viagra emails, so try to stop that as soon as you can. If you're going to display an email address, it might also pay to set up a free one (Hotmail, YAHOO, Gmail etc. beforehand so that you’re ready to go immediately).

Setting everything up properly might take you a bit of time, but do it right at the start and everything will be much smoother later on. It's easy to navigate around the dashboard and most of the options are logically placed under half a dozen or so tabs and explained well. You can also have multiple blogs under the one account or you can appoint multiple authors to a blog (each author must have a Blogger account, though).

Entering your submissions is dead easy. You have a standard interface offering formatting options (font, size, colour etc.) with some tools for adding pictures and links to other sites. You can edit your work in a standard WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) view as you would in Word or a modern word processing program or you can delve right in and edit the HTML directly. I've only ever used the WYSIWYG interface and basic HTML tags, so cannot comment on how much HTML you can use.

Once you've posted several submissions, your previous posts are linked to and archived in a way you decide through the your dashboard. For example, if you don't post often or if your posts are short, then you might choose to archive monthly, but if you post a lot or submit long pieces, then more frequent might be advisable. Your past posts are always available for others to see (if you choose), so you don't need to worry about posts disappearing etc.

I believe Google offers a basic image hosting service for bloggers, but I've always used ImageShack (http://www.imageshack.us/) instead which is a totally separate site that allows me to host images and link to them, not just on Blogger, but any site I choose. This works well for me, is free and easy enough to use.

As for extra features, Blogger itself is pretty light with only the "Blogger for Word" tool that I can recall (write and publish your entries within Word without having to log onto the site). There are plenty of sites out there that allow you to add various features to your blog including, but not restricted to, hit counters, HTML goodies, advanced templates etc. The world, as they say, is your oyster.

Across the top of the page, there's a navigation bar which grants access to your blog's dashboard. You can also gain access to Blogger's Google search for all blogs, navigate to random blogs and flag up objectionable content to Blogger. I'd like to see some kind of amendment where I can choose which 'random' blogs I'd like to visit. English is my only language, and when using this navigation tool, I frequently come across foreign language blogs which are useless to me. Being able to surf to English-only blogs would be brilliant.

Blogger does have plenty of tutorials and "How to" articles, so if you're stuck, you're bound to find some help. If not, then there are plenty of websites out there where you can find help. Your blogging can be as basic or as complicated as you choose to make it.

It's not all gold and roses on Blogger, though. Sometimes the site can be horrendously slow. Clicking on the dashboard icon to be able to access the dashboard to submit a post or change settings and you'll be waiting a while. I'd guess that's because Blogger is a busy site, but doesn't make it any less annoying. There's also the number of crap "comments" made by automatic means or by people trying to sell you stuff, thankfully the word verification tool is there, but that doesn't stop you from finding these "blogs" when you browse. Possibly my biggest gripe with Blogger is that blogs aren't categorised. It would be nice to be able to browse blogs by topic (perhaps as a stored criteria as part of my profile) rather than randomly and as yet, Blogger doesn't seem to offer that feature, which is a shame. It's also quite tricky to change the templates if you don't have HTML knowledge, which is a negative point, but you can cut and paste the code into a WYSIWYG HTML editor (e.g. Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc.) and make changes to it via that tool before cutting and pasting the finished code back into Blogger and saving.

Despite the speed problems, Blogger tends to be quite stable as a site, suffering from a very small amount of downtime. Some downtime is necessary for maintenance etc., but everything's announced via your dashboard with plenty of advanced warning.

There are alternatives to Blogger. LiveJournal has already been mentioned as a site similar to Blogger in terms of use. If you have an account with a hosting company, you could use a tool to create your own blog, away from crammed sites like Blogger and LJ. I've used Movable Type (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/) in the past and found it to be excellent, if a bit tricky to set up, but it's extremely customisable. You'd need to have some expertise in setting up a site to make full use of this, though. There are many others out there.

It would seem that blogging is here to stay. There are loads of blogs out there and loads of blogging systems, each one offering something a bit different. Don't worry, not all bloggers are individuals using theirs as an online diary, boring the world. Some people restrict them to discussion with regard to a specific subject. The use of a blog is only restricted by your own ingenuity. Write your comments on current affairs, use one to jot down your experiences as you travel the world so you friends can keep up, post your creative writing on it or any number of different things you could do with a blog.

Obviously blogging is down to personal preference. Some like it, others can't understand why people do it. However, if you fancy having a go at blogging, you can do much worse than host it on Blogger.

For further information on blogs and blogging, try the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Some interesting blogs:
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Summary: Online blogging system which has a myriad of uses.