March 01, 2005
What is a blog?
A blog is a Web log - a journal that's published on the World Wide Web. The kids who started keeping such logs came up with the abbreviation, which I don't much care for, but there you are. In France, some writers call their blogs carnets, using a word that can mean "little black book," if you're old enough to remember that phrase.
What is a blog? There are really two questions here:
1. What is a blog?
2. What's the difference between a Web site and a Web log?
It's useful to answer the second question first. Initially, there was no difference. But accompanying the growth in blogging activity was the development of software designed to make blogging more interactive.
For Web sites, you see, are not interactive. A Web site is a collection of pages, at least one of which is named "index.htm." You may or may not see that name in the upper corner of your browser, but that's the universal front page marker. There may or may not be other pages. Navigation - the means for directing your browser from one page to another within a Web site - is handled by hyperlinks, those patches of text that are usually underlined but that may appear in bold type. Hyperlinks are not "interactive." You can't interact with - change - a Web site unless you own it and have access to the server on which it is stored. If you want to comment on a Web page, you have to contact the author outside of the browser, whether by email, snail mail, telephone, or smoke signals. Trust me: you won't bother, unless by chance you're extraordinarily interested. Even friends will only write the very occasional note of appreciation. Web sites are unidirectional: the owner addresses the visitor. To operate a Web site, all you need is a text editor - if you know your HTML tags, the "Notepad" accessory that's standard on all PCs will do this job - a file transfer protocol program to copy the files on your computer to a Web host server, and some rented space on a Web host server. It's very simple, really, but now that we're in the age of blogs, you're unlikely to set up a personal Web site. I wonder if I'd have bothered with one myself. To see my Web site, click the Portico link on the sidebar - the white column to the left. (I could, of course, put a link to Portico right here, but give the one that's already there a try.)
If you have any question about the foregoing, post a comment. What does this mean and how do you do it? We'll get to that presently. But for the time being, type out your question somewhere, preferably on your computer so that you can paste it into the comment block later.
This is not the place to describe the development of blogging software. You needn't be concerned with it unless you want to start your own blog, and if you're finding any of this material new, hold off on setting up a blog. All you have to know is that Web logs are more complicated than Web sites because the pages are arranged not by the site owner but by dedicated software that also enables other features that will not be found on a plain Web site. And what would these be?
Now we can answer the first question, and we are going to answer it in reply to a vistor's query. There are lots of things - oh, dear, how many things! - about a Web log that no visitor ever needs to know. But there are two aspects of a blog that make blogging far more interesting for everybody than running or visiting a Web site can be. These are comments and permalinks.
Comments are really the life of any Web log, and I am going to talk about comments at length. Right now, we're going to focus on mechanics. To post a comment, find the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post and click it. Your browser will blink, and the sidebar will disappear. So will everything else, it may seem. But don't worry about anything but posting your comment.
First, enter whatever information is required. Miss Gostrey's Guide doesn't ask for much. You may type in "Anonymous" if you like, or make up a name. If you decline to post your own email address, then mine will appear in its place. If you have a Web site of your own and would like to post a link to it, you don't need to be reading this. So: type a name, and then move the cursor into the Comment block. Rather than ask you to think of something to say, I'm going to suggest that you write Thank you, Miss Gostrey. (Why not cut and paste the words?) Then, just to be safe, click on the "Preview" button; your comment will appear at the top of the page. Once you're satisfied that the comment is correct, click on "Post."
Nothing may happen for a few seconds; if the server is busy, your comment may take thirty seconds or so to be processed. But eventually the browser will blink again, and your comment will appear below all the preceding comments.
You will also note that at the top of the page there are some new navigational pointers, one of which will be "Main." To return to the site as you saw it when you arrived, click on this. Voilà: the sidebar reappears. But your comments vanish. Don't worry; they're still there.
Permalinks provide permanent access to the individual pages in a Web log. When a blogger posts a new entry, a new page is created in the blog's archives. For a certain period, fixed by the author - generally a week or two - the new page will also appear on the blog's index page. You'll recall what index pages are from my remarks on Web sites. Web logs have them too, for Web logs are Web sites with additional features, not alternative ones. At the end of the fixed period, the once-new page, which will have drifted post by post toward the bottom of the index page as new ones are posted after it, will simply vanish. But it will remain accessible indefinitely, in the archives. So if somebody sends you a permalink to my site, and you don't get around to checking it out for six weeks, not to worry. Whether you follow the permalink five seconds after it appears in your inbox or six months later, you'll see the same material. Now, click on the "Permalink" link, below. Once again, the browser blinks and the sidebar disappears. But this time, you're back at the top of this post and the heading What is a blog? If you scroll down, you'll eventually come to the end of the post and a section about "Trackbacks." Ignore that and keep scrolling until the comments begin to appear (if there are any - and, if you've followed this guide so far, there ought to be!), with the Comment block at the very end. This is in fact the very same page on which you posted your comment earlier, only in that case the "Comments" link took you to a particular line of the page. Permalinks, in contrast, always present you with the top of a page. I hope that you'll see that this arrangement makes excellent sense.
If you look at the Address or URL box of your browser - the long space where you type in the addresses of sites that you want to visit - before and after clicking on "Permalink," you will notice that there's a lot more address after. That's because the before address simply points your browswer to the blog's index page (which is understood, so it doesn't have to appear in the box). The after address points your browser to the particular page, buried somewhere in the archive, on which the entry that you want a permalink for appears. It is this longer address that you might use to send to a friend, along with a note, "Can you believe how stupid this guy is?" Well, no, we don't talk like that here. But when your friend clicks on that address, his or her browser will point straight to the permalinked page. This means that you don't have to tell your friend to go to such and such a site, then click this, then that, then scroll down a hundred yards. Friends, even good friends, don't bother to follow such instructions. Not unless there's a winning lottery number at the end of the trail.
To copy the permalink, highlight the contents of the Address box and copy them to your clipboard. (There will be several ways of doing this, one of which, presumably, you've already come to prefer. This is not a primer on GUIs.) Paste the selfsame link onto an email, and surround it with explanatory comment so that your correspondent will have some idea of what to expect. (Although the problem will never arise here, it is important, when sending the permalinks of racy sites, to warn friends that the material at the other end of the link may not be "work appropriate." This is always to be pointed out in connection with pages that load to the sound of music, or other audio effects, no matter how pleasing to you.) Send.
Once again: any questions? Be bold; hide beyond "Anonymous." You may even ask me to delete your comment, and, if I think that there's anything remotely embarrassing about it, such as some howlingly misspelled word or nine line breaks in a row, I'll either fix the problem or delete the post, depending on my blood pressure. But do ask. You really have nothing to lose, and everybody starts out knowing nothing.
Posted by pourover at March 1, 2005 08:57 PM
Comments
This may be a very silly question, but keep in mind that I am highly technologically challenged. What are HTML tags and how does one use them?
Posted by: jkm at March 2, 2005 07:04 PM
Thank you, JKM, for your post: you did absolutely the right thing! An explanation of the tags that are useful in posting comments is forthcoming, but you do not need to know about HTML tags right now - and you've given me the chance to reassure you about that. Which I hope I have done.
Posted by: RJ Keefe at March 2, 2005 07:14 PM
Rest assured, I am reassured. But now that you have gotten me interested in the whole blogging thing, I want to know all the tricks of the trade (at least those pertinent to commenters).
Posted by: jkm at March 2, 2005 07:58 PM
Thanks for the short course on weblogs and permalinks. I, too, feel sure I know what all I need to know at this point about them.
I read your blog, and that of Ellen and Jim; even though the atmosphere is slightly headier here than there, I feel at home in both. For that reason I hope to find the nerve to ask questions: housekeeping questions about The Ambassadors. Reading is such a private affair: asking oneself a question about Chapter One is no problem, but doing it in public is altogether different.
Posted by: Richard Mintz at March 9, 2005 12:53 PM
Reading a book is a solitary activity, certainly, but sharing the pleasure of a good book is not. And after your explanation of "hang fire," Richard, you've no need for courage, because you've got sense. Depend on it.
Posted by: R J Keefe at March 9, 2005 01:31 PM
And, for those who don't know Miss Gostrey we offer the following:
Ah it was but too visible! She read it over again as one who had never seen it. "'Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether'"--she sounded it almost as freely as for any stranger. She repeated however that she liked it--"particularly the Lewis Lambert. It's the name of a novel of Balzac's."
"Oh I know that!" said Strether.
"But the novel's an awfully bad one."
"I know that too," Strether smiled. To which he added with an irrelevance that was only superficial: "I come from Woollett Massachusetts." It made her for some reason--the irrelevance or whatever--laugh. Balzac had described many cities, but hadn't described Woollett Massachusetts. "You say that," she returned, "as if you wanted one immediately to know the worst."
Text lifted from Litrix
Posted by: George at May 7, 2005 10:32 AM
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