What is a blog? Oh! I don’t expect you’ll still ask that unless you just came in. if you did just join the team, I guess there are some posts you need to read before coming to this. I give you the challenge of finding your way around here. If you can’t, make sure you ask. Never be shy to ask even what you think is the most stupid question. A great philosopher named Socrates once said “All I know is I know nothing”. If you think you know nothing, then you are on the right track.

We have defined what a blog is, but there are many other terms we need to examine and define so that our understanding of blogs and blogging can be strengthened. Can we start by defining the Internet?

The internet is a massive networking infrastructure that connects millions of computers globally forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to that network (the internet)

Many people usually use the terms Internet and web interchangeably but as a matter of fact, they are two separate terms with different meanings. The Internet is a network while the web is a means of accessing information on that network.

The World Wide Web is a means by which computers connected to the Internet communicate. This has more to do with sharing and interlinking information rather than computers.

A blog is a frequently updated online journal with entries arranged in reverse chronological order. The word blog is also used as a verb, to describe the action of building and maintaining an online journal or a blog.

A blogger is someone who runs and maintains a blog.

WebLog is the original word for blog. Programmer Peter Merholz shortened the word WebLog to blog, April 1999. Today, very few people still stick to the word weblog.

A post, or blog post, is an entry that has been submitted to a blog. This entry can be in the form of an article, a tutorial, lesson, report, observation…etc.

A comment is an entry submitted by a reader at the end of a post to say something that is directly or indirectly related (and sometimes unrelated) to the post. Comments are very effective ways by which readers interact with each other and with a blogger.

A commenter (commentator) is someone who regularly submits comments to posts in a blog.

A post title, as direct as the term says, is the title of a post. It is that first phrase or sentence that tells a reader what the post is all about. For better visibility, most bloggers give their post titles a larger font size or a more distinguishing color.

A blog platform is a software that can be used to install and run a blog. Some common blog platforms are blogger, wordpress, typepad…etc. the general design and functioning of a blog depends on the platform used, though the power of customization always twist and tweak things around a bit.

A sidebar is a column-like space reserved on the left or right side of a blog for additional information such as menus and advertisements. Such space differs from one template (theme) to another and some themes even have up to 4 sidebars.

A theme, or template, is a set of files that can be used to change the appearance of a blog. Themes define how visible elements of a blog, such as font type, size, colors, margins…etc behave.

The archive of a blog is a section, usually on the sidebar, that links to previous posts in that blog. Using the archive, one can decide to display previous posts by day, week, month or even year.

The blogroll is a section on a blog, usually on the sidebar, that list sites related to that blog or just provides a list of the author’s favorite sites.

Categories are small headings in blog under which posts can be posted. If one is running a blog on self improvement, for example, categories can be attraction, coaching, creativity, goal setting, happiness, time management, stress management, motivation, organization, leadership, success…etc.

Tags are terms used to define broader categories. If one is running a blog on society, categories can be dating, divorce, marriage, relationships. If one has to post under any of these categories, here are certain words that describe what the post is all about in a more general term. If a post is posted under dating, then that post is certainly about love, women, kissing, love making, romance, seduction, relationships…etc. These “more general terms” are what bloggers refer to as tags.

A cloud is a portion on a blog, usually the sidebar, which displays certain entities of the blog in a tightly fitted manner. Let’s say for example that you allocate space on your sidebar that displays all the categories you use on your blog in a tightly fitted manner, that section will be referred to as a category cloud. Likewise, there also exists a tag cloud, a visitor cloud, members cloud, series cloud…etc.

These are just few of the terms that are associated with blogs, blogging and bloggers. Watch out for part 2 of this post.

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