How Blogs Are Organized

Before we delve into the ins and outs of Blogger, let's take a minute to look at how blogs work, in general. As we first discussed in Chapter 6, "Searching Blogs and Blog Postings," a blog is kind of like a personal diary made public on the Web, a kind of message forum that any user can create. After you launch your blog, you populate it as frequently as you want with your various and sundry musings, in the form of individual blog posts. Other users can respond to your postings, and you can respond to their responses. In this way, a blog is an organic thing.

And, while blogs reside on the Web and are viewed via web browsers, they're organized much differently than normal websites. Instead of the standard home page plus subsidiary page structure, a blog typically has just a single page of entries. This main page contains the most recent posts, and might require a bit of scrolling to get to the bottom. There's no introductory page; this main page serves as both introduction and primary content.

Older posts are typically stored in the blog archives. You'll normally find a link to the archives somewhere on the main page; there might be one huge archive, or individual archives organized by month.

The blog posts themselves are arranged in reverse chronological order. That means that the most recent post is always at the top of the page, with older posts below that. Comments to a post are typically in normal chronological order; you may have to click a link to see a separate page of comments.

Beyond this basic structure, that's all the organization you're likely to find in most blogs. That's because, for many bloggers, blog entries are a stream of consciousness thing. Bloggers blog when they find something interesting to write about, which makes the typical blog a little like a public diary. Don't look for a logical flow or organization; that's not what blogs are about. Instead, post your thoughts and opinions as they occur. It's the way the blogosphere works.

Commentary: Why Blog?

Blogging takes timeeven when you utilize an easy-to-use tool like Blogger. Not only do you have to create the blog, you then have to keep it updated on a fairly frequent basis. For some bloggers, this means daily posts; for others, several posts a day. Knowing this, how do so many bloggers find time for all these postingsand why?

For what it's worth, there isn't a single answer to that question.

You see, some people view their blogs as a kind of personal-yet-public scrapbookan online diary to record their thoughts for posterity. Even if no one else ever looks at it, it's still valuable to the author as Arepository of thoughts and information he or she can turn to at any later date.

But that isn't always the case. While some blogs are completely free-form, many other blogs have some sort of focus. For example, Tech Blog (talkingtechs.blogspot.com) is a blog all about technology-related topics; High Fiber Content (highfibercontent.blogspot.com) is a blog about quilting. Other bloggers write about music or videogames or travel or cooking or whatever they're interested in. Their blogs include their thoughts on the topic at hand, as well as links to interesting news articles and websites.

Other people blog for a cause. Liberal blogs link to left-leaning stories and pages; conservative blogs contain commentary and links that reinforce their right-leaning viewpoints. There are blogs for every point on the political spectrum, and some you've never thought of.

In a way, the most serious bloggers are like columnists in the traditional media. They write with a passion, point-of-view, and personal sensibility that makes their blogs extremely interesting to read. Even bloggers who don't inject personal comments still offer a viewpoint based on what they choose to include and link to in their blogs. It's an interesting world out there in the blogosphere, and it's revolutionizing journalism (and journals) for the new online reality.