Nuts & Volts - July 2005

On the other hand, Hewitt feels that approach has actually been a plus in writing Blog. “It’s a forest and trees thing,” Hewitt adds. “The techno-wonks are all lost in ‘the beauties of RSS feed,’ and whether or not videoblogging is going to overwhelm conventional blogging.

I’m stepping back and looking at a new communications technology available to anyone with a nickel and a modem, and saying that that’s got huge consequences.”

How huge? Well, Hewitt compares Weblogs to Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Isn’t that a bit presumptuous? Is the Blogosphere really comparable to the Reformation?

“Absolutely,” Hewitt says (and other bloggers have also used the analogy). “The Church lost control of the text, and once they did, especially with its translation into German, individual people began making decisions for themselves. Today, Big Media has lost control of the information flow, and the consequences are immediate and all around us.”

So What Makes a Weblog Tick?

The basic feature that a Weblog allows is virtually instantaneous (and very easy) uploading of a block of text in what is called a post. Unlike a magazine or newspaper — where physical requirements often dictate articles of a certain length — posts can vary in length from a single short sentence (often containing a hyperlink to a related lengthier article offsite) to a thousand words or more. A post can also be strictly a link to a photo, or an audio or video clip.

Traffic gets drawn to a Weblog from several sources, including friends and fellow bloggers. The other source of a Weblog’s traffic is search engines. Search engines — particularly Google — love Weblogs, and as a Weblog accumulates posts on a variety of topics, new readers will find your Weblog when they are searching for information on the topics you’ve discussed.

How to Start a Weblog

Starting a blog is astonishingly easy. There are a number of software platforms that facilitate it, but perhaps the two most popular are Blogger and Movable Type. Blogger ( www.blogger.com), which was bought by Google in 2003, is perhaps the easiest of all. Enter a user name and password, select a template, and off you go. They’ll even host it for free on their Blogspot domain. However, if you have some sort of website already, it’s probably best to host the blog there, and simply use Blogger to enter data into it.

Movable Type ( www.sixapart.com/movabletype/) is a more powerful alternative, and includes several features built-in that require additional installation to the basic Blogger software. But Moveable Type generally requires either professional installation, or at least prior knowledge of web programming.

JULY 2005

Blog, written by Hugh Hewitt, is about the Blogosphere — what it is, what it’s accomplished, and where it’s going.

Hugh Hewitt — creator of the hughhewitt.com weblog site and author of Blog.

Many of the most prominent blogs have begun on Blogger (and frequently hosted on Blogspot) before moving to running on Moveable Type on their own domains. Skilled web designers (such as Stacy Tabb of Sekimori.com) can frequently port over data created on other formats when updating to Moveable Type.

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