kadyellebee

I enjoyed reading Mark’s thoughts on The Ws of weblogging. He discusses the essential elements to blogging. This is my personal interpretation of the list, very much so inspired by reading his.

1. where: location, location, location. Permalinks are important, and so is a URL that people will recognize. Not that blogspot/geocities/etc URLs are bad, but I personally tend to take notice of blogs that are domains or subdomains. Either way, having a URL/site that people can link to and the location doesn’t change is good (or at least doesn’t change very often). Usually, this tends to show that someone has put time and energy into creating their site.


2. who: getting to know you. An about page or some sort of way that people can get to know the author is important to me as a reader. Some people have 100 things lists, others have a brief sidebar with links that illustrate their personality and what they are a part of, and some have this and more. I usually hit about pages the first or second time I find a blog, to get to know the person before I read their weblog on a more permanent basis.


3. when: dates and times. Because weblogs by definition are updated more frequently than a static page, having some sort of recognizion of when the entry was posted is helpful. The most common way to show this is with a time/date stamp. Especially if its a blog I read regularly, I look at times to see when the last entry was made.


4. what: content is key. Depending on the blog, content can be very different. A journal entry, links on a linklog, pictures on a photoblog. In many blogs I read, this means that if someone is talking about what they read in an article, they provide some analysis or perspective along with it.


5. how: the whole package A weblog that has all of these elements usually is created with a weblog program or CMS. An interactive weblog will include comments - being part of weblogging before comments were available makes me desire that even more! Full featured weblogs include syndication and/or trackback options, among other things. Of course, my preference lies with movable type, but there are plenty of great options out there that still will produce the W’s of weblogging.