Creating a blog/What is a blog?

Introduction
A blog is a website which enables individuals, groups or organisations to easily publish content on the Internet. It is a website that's like an online diary.

"Blog" is a shortened form of the combined term "web log", which literally means to keep a "log" on the "web" of the events in some part of your life. Blogs began by publishing online diaries often with a particular focus of interest to others eg "Around China in 80 days" or "Gastronomic Adventures in France". Cheaper and faster to update than writing a book, some early blogs attracted massive followings of readers from around the world. These days, blogs are used for a wide range of online publishing purposes.

The concept "blog" can be used as a noun to refer to the website where information or opinions are published. It can also be used as a verb referring the the act of posting or updating material on a blog website. We refer to the publishers of this type of website as "bloggers" and the act of posting new entries as "blogging".

A blog website incorporates a number of distinct features which have contributed to blogging becoming a social phenomenon:


 * The ease of publishing a blog post has circumvented the requirement for traditional publishers as intermediaries for distributing information.
 * Many blog websites incorporate the feature for anyone to comment on posts facilitating the ability for immediate interaction and networking on a global scale.
 * Syndication technology using feeds generated from blog sites enable automated connections and reconfiguration of information not previously possible with traditional means of publishing, thus signalling a shift for users searching for information to information finding its users.

Defining a blog
There is no precise definition of a blog to differentiate them from other websites, however blogs do have common features. In addition, blog software can also be used to construct websites which are not primarily intended for blogging purposes. Read the following extract of Wikipedia's article on a blog: