SolveYourProblem eLearning Series: Blogging
Free Bloggers Guide
( 20 Pages )

Identifying & Choosing The Right Tools

Bloggers are constantly discovering new ways to express their ideas through new markup. There are bloggers who are using the latest state-of-the-art “visual” web design programs, but few others consider using HTML code is not a bad idea altogether.

The XHTML family can accommodate extensions through XHTML modules and techniques to develop new XHTML-conforming modules. These modules permit the combination of existing and new feature sets when developing content and when designing new user agents.

With so many different ways to access the Internet, the XHTML family is designed keeping in mind the general user agent interoperability. Through document profiling mechanism, servers, proxies, and user agents are able to create best effort content transformation. This language is both RSS and XML conforming. The content can be readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools. XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object Model or the XML Document Object Model.

Bloggers may also use Movable Type for the weblog. Movable Type is a powerful, customizable publishing system, which installs on web servers to enable bloggers to manage and update weblogs. This enables a blogger to hand edit the other parts and pages, including the Daily Links, in TextPad. Bloggers may use a date format string for the individual entries, and for monthlies.

Movable Type Installation is followed by Plugins. There are many to choose from. MT Plugin Directory and the Movable Type Support Forums are two resources that can be referred to. Most of the plugins make users typographically correct and enables them to properly use curly-quotes, ellipses, em-dashes, and en-dashes. A feature of plugins combines trackbacks (comments on other articles from other blogs) and comments into one page. Another use is to create author comments and addendums in the comments engine. Few plugins may allow bloggers to add additional fields, example: using keywords field to create additional fields. Few others create a collection of links at the bottom of each individual entry page. Title attributes can be used with all the links. Movable Type includes a default RSS Feed. Bloggers may set up individual feeds for each thread and comments feed by following the naming convention of individual archives - changing it to an .xml ending. Bloggers may even add a Subscription Field.

Also, bloggers may consider using a WebDrive in place of a FTP client. This tool is used to map FTP and WebDAV servers to a network drive letter in Windows using remote files like local ones in any application. Blogger may also consider using validated HTML 4.01 Transitional code with a validated stylesheet.

Blogs demand more than graphic design and HTML proficiency. They demand extensive interaction with visitors. So, installing a Discussion Forum is a must, as it allows communities to exchange ideas and opinions. Tools that could be considered are database programming, CGI/Perl scripting, Flash animation etc.

In addition to this, bloggers may consider having an Accessory Sideblog - another blog that stores ancillary information and tools for the existing blog.

Accessory Sideblog allows:

• Easy updating

• Changes in entries/ information from within Movable Type interface

• Availability of comments and trackbacks

Bloggers may consider buying open source weblogging software. These easily installable software products offer features like: fully-integrated comments, searching, file uploading and image handling, completely customizable output through dozens of templates and variables, multiple author support, etc. For example: few blogs allow bloggers to provide a template of their page that indicates where they want your posts to appear. Clicking the "Publish" button automatically sends their new page to the website where they want their blogs to appear. Similarly, there are sites that enable bloggers to place the RSS feed of their blog onto any html page. For example: bloggers can copy the completed JavaScript and paste it on any web page they would like to distribute.

Bloggers can host their blog on their own as well with any good web-hosting company. They can choose a good web host, buy space on their server and host their blogs with them.

The details of few of the blog creating software products are mentioned below:

FactoSystem Weblog (ASP based)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/facto/

Facto is a collaborative web publishing system. The system can be used for creating personal or group 'Blog' type sites. It is written entirely in Active Server Pages (ASP) and can use Microsoft Access or SQL Server as a database backend. Its development status is : 4 - Beta, 5 - Production/Stable and environment in which it runs is web environment, Win32 (MS Windows). The intended audience is defined to be end users/desktop, other audience and system administrators. The software’s natural language is English. The operating system that is required is Windows 95/98/2000 and the programming languages used are ASP and JavaScript. It is mostly used for message boards and site management.

Facto can be a customized. One can try coding to "render a blurb in HTML" to be in a separate file. It relies on the BlurbRS recordset having the correct field names with the SQL in some of the other files. Instead of querying the Comments table every time it displays a blurb. The layout can also be changed as some people may not require the left or right columns. A function on the routines page can be created that displays the blurb as required. The search results page then needs to be fixed since a different name for the blurb is used to do this.

InstaBlog
http://instablog.hit.bg/

InstaBlog appeared as a result of two things: responding to the simplest possible way to maintain a weblog, and trying out the extremely cool Perl MSN IM client. InstaBlog functions in the following manner: it is run as a background process on a machine with Internet access. With its own Passport identification it is constantly logged into the MSN instant messenger service. When something worthy of note is found in the weblog, chat windows is opened with the InstaBlog and the weblog entry is typed. The software takes it, adds it to a copy of the weblog it maintains, and uploads it via FTP to a webserver. The message should appear on the website specified in config.xml. The InstaBlog bot uploads three files: the actual weblog.xml, the stylesheet to display it (weblog.xsl), and an index.html which redirects to weblog.xml. The software is written in Perl.

OpenJournal
http://www.grohol.com/downloads/oj/

OpenJournal is a completely Web-based interface. The software’s features include: automated file creation; automated index updating; editing of all files through a Web-based interface; entries with or without titles and time posted; automated archiving based on a weekly or monthly format. All done through ordinary text files and no additional perl modules are needed to run it. Basically, the software allows the users to keep an online journal, customize and configure it. All needed to do after installation is to write in it from time to time. It requires no third-party, external perl libraries or support programs. The program itself is relatively small and simple and takes about 5 minutes to install and another 5 or 10 to customize. The 2.x versions of OpenJournal make use of the auth.pl perl script to handle its authentication routines. Other features of the software include: automatic new file creation, automatic indexing, automatic weekly or monthly archiving without need of cron, no messy backend database to worry about, uses plain text and html files, web-based editing of all files created without using cookies, encrypted user accounts and robust authorization, multiuser support, preview functionality, configuration file separate from main program, templated construction (easy customization), cross-platform date function .

GeekLog - The Ultimate Weblog System
http://sourceforge.net/projects/geeklog

GeekLog is a web content management system suitable for running full-featured community sites. It supports article posting, threaded comments, event scheduling, and link management and is built around a design philosophy that emphasizes ease of use. The development status of the software is 5 - Production/Stable. It requires web environment. The software has been designed keeping in mind the intended audience to be developers, end users/desktop. The software’s natural language is English and uses OS Independent as its operating system. The programming language that has been used is PHP and functions mostly to maintain dynamic content.

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