Key Terms

Don't let unfamiliar terms discourage you from learning all you can about blogging. If you don't completely understand what one of these words means, flip to the indicated page, read the full definition there, and find techniques related to that term.

Audioblog

Adding posts of audio clips of your voice or other recordings to your blog. Page 185

Blockquote

A style of text that is typically used to set off a long quote that you want to include in a post. 72

Blog

Short for weblog, a kind of World Wide Web-based journal. 3

Blogosphere

A community of all blogs posted on the Web. 7

Blogroll

A list of blogs or other websites you read frequently. Typically, this is listed as a sidebar in your blog. 174

Bulleted List

A list where there is no given order of occurrence. Bulleted list items are marked with small icons or "bullets." 67

Captcha

An acronym that stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test and refers to a type of challenge-response test to determine whether the user is a human rather than an automated response. 18

Commenting

Enabling comments allows readers to talk with you and each other about your blog. It makes users more likely to return to your site and helps to build a community. 142

Dooce

To be fired from your job for items posted on your blog. Named after blogger Heather Armstrong's website, dooce.com. 6

Feed Aggregator

An application that makes it easy to read more than a few blogs on any given day. 204

Flickr

An online photo management application that many bloggers use. It is found at http://www.flickr.com. 111

Folksonomy

The collection and categorization of items by the people doing the collection and categorization. 215

Hyperlink

Text that is marked to open another webpage when clicked. 66

Linkware

A linked graphic or icon placed on your site that advertises your affiliation with a product or company. 180

Lurker

A silent reader who reads content and follows conversations without actively taking part. 8

Moblog

An abbreviation for mobile blogging. This is usually done from a cellular phone or an Internet-linked PDA. Page 182

NavBar

A standard part of the Blogger template, the NavBar contains quick links to the Blogger main page, a search form for the specific blog you're viewing as well as all blogs indexed by Google, the ability to flag content as objectionable, and a link to the Next Blog feature, which takes you to a randomly selected blog that might be new to you. 188

Numbered List

A list where things happen in a given order. Often, cooking recipes will use numbered lists. 66

Permalinks

"Permanent Links" created for individual blog posts. Permalinks allow you to provide direct access to individual blog posts rather than saying something like "go to the entry for June 27th, 2005 and look for the third post." 46

PhotoBucket

An online photo management application that many bloggers use. It is found at http://www.photobucket.com/. 115

RSS

An abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS feeds are read through RSS aggregators that collect the newest entries from your favorite blogs all in one place. 200

Template

The customizable "look and feel" that can be use to personalize a blog. Blogger offers more than 30 templates that can be used as-is or can be customized. 122

Text Justification

Text can be aligned or "justified" in one of three ways: left, right, or center. Most text in English is left-justified or aligned flush with the left margin. 66

Thumbnail

A smaller version of a bigger image. With Blogger, you can select different page layouts via an index of thumbnail images. 31

Timestamp

The time and date that a blog entry was published. The format can be changed in the Timestamp Format field. 39

Troll

A person whose sole purpose is to post specious arguments, flames, and personal attacks. 10

WYSIWYG

An acronym for what you see is what you get. A WYSIWYG editor helps you to produce HTML markup without requiring that you know any HTML to begin with. 34