Blog Design Solutions

Blogging has moved rapidly from being a craze to become a core feature of the Internet from individuals sharing their thoughts with the world via online diaries, through fans talking about their favorite sports teams or music, right up to serious business minds discussing industry futures. And that includes you, right? If you haven't got a blog already, you want to start one, and want to find out how. If you have already got one, you want to know how to customize it, and make it look cooler than everybody elses. In either case, this is the ideal book for you. In this book, a team of renowned web designers take you through the ins and outs of putting together great blogs. They waste no time harking on about the philosophy of blogs, or the community behind them. Instead, they get straight to the practical details, showing how to set up a basic blog in some of the world's most popular blogging engines &emdash; Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, and Textpattern. With your blog set up, they then show you how to build great looking, usable layouts for your blog. The last chapter even shows you how to build your very own PHP/MySQL-based blog engine! With this book in hand, youll have found your way to blog heaven in no time! Summary of contents:

* Chapter 1: The "Web Log"
* Chapter 2: Creating a Local Test Environment for Your Blog
* Chapter 3: Movable Type
* Chapter 4: ExpressionEngine
* Chapter 5: WordPress
* Chapter 6: Textpattern
* Chapter 7: Write Your Own Blog Engine

This book will be extremely helpful to the new blogger who desires insight into the ins and outs of blogging, as well as the logistical knowledge (geeky know-how) required to install and use four of the most popular blogging systems available today (MovableType, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, and Textpattern). Its depth regarding the specifics of each blogging system is shallow, but given the obvious diversity of the content and targeted audience, this should be expected. To that point, most of the authors explicitly acknowledge only being able to give a small glimpse into the depths of each blogging system.

The four chapters, dedicated each to a specific blogging system, are an excellent starting point for the blogging newbie. However, this comes at a price. That is, in order to digest the four chapters which focus on a specific system, an individual must first digest the technical matters discussed in chapter 2 (LAMP, WAMP, MAMP). I don't see this as a downfall of the book, but rather as the place where the learning curve might jump beyond the targeted audience.

Once the reader has digested chapter 2, the book moves straight into the implementation and usage of MovableType. At this point, I think the authors made a critical error by not including a chapter dedicated to an objective overview and comprehensive comparison of the four blogging systems showcased. For example, ExpressionEngine has very specific strengths in the realm of user management that should have been compared and contrasted against the other systems. The reason being, that a majority of the noise found on the Internet concerning blogging is dedicated to this exact issue. As well, it never fails. Each and every person blogging today did (or eventually will) seek an objective overview and comprehensive comparison of the blogging systems available. Without a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each system, readers are left to essentially pick one of the systems randomly, hoping they are picking the one that best suits their needs. Questions like, "which system provides the easiest template manipulation?", "which systems support community plug-ins?", and "which system is the easiest to get up-and-running?" are left for readers to either deduct from one small chapter or research and answer elsewhere.

As for the last chapter, I was a little confused by its worth to a blogging newbie (at whom the book is obviously targeted). I'm almost sure that if you need a book to show you how to install Textpattern, then the last chapter of this book is way over your head from a technical perspective.

The book's saving grace is the fact that it was published at all. Given the options (none at this point), this book is well worth the purchase if your goal is to get up and running with next to no knowledge about the topic at hand. Of course, I hear that Typo 3 has a book.

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Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide

If you want to start blogging fast, but don’t want to get sidetracked by the details, then you need a Visual QuickProject Guide!

Writing in a journal is all well and good, but when you're ready to share your musings with the world (and you think the world is ready to receive them!), a blog is the way to go. For just $12.99, this compact guide shows you how! Using big, bold full-color pictures and streamlined instructions, it covers just the need-to-know essentials that will get you blogging with leading free blog software--Google’s Blogger--in a matter of minutes. Best-selling author Elizabeth Castro takes you through each step of the blogging process--from acquainting you with the interface to setting up your blog, creating your profile, posting email, adding pictures and audio, and more. Occasional sidebars and tips point out other useful blogging tips and tricks.

This book is very visual, lots of fun, and easy to read and understand---in short, perfect for the beginning blogger. It is the exact opposite of a reference manual, and thus is very hands on. Note that this book is only for people who want to use Blogger, which is free, to publish their blog. If you don't know what you want to publish your blog with, you like the "free" part, and you're not a business, you probably will be very, very happy with Blogger. So this would definitely be the book for you.

It is only 127 pages, so it's not overwhelming to read. You can easily go through it over a weekend and get your blog up and running. If you have HTML or XHTML experience, you'll find lots of good things, too, so slightly more experienced bloggers may still pick up a few tips, like how to change their header on a template or how to syndicate their blog.

If you are a geek, you won't need this book. You'll just log onto Blogger and think it's "intuitive" and be able to do everything. However, if you're like me and get stuck a lot, even with so-called "intuitive" software, you'll love this book.

Even though this book was published in 2005, and yes, Blogger is in a new version, I haven't found any problems applying what is in the book. None at all. The new version of Blogger just does more things for you; everything in the book still needs to be done one way or another. So it's doesn't make the book dated as far as it's utility goes. If you're really a beginner (which is who this book is for) you might not even notice.

There are pictures throughout of what the screens look like, so instead of TELLING you what to do and letting you figure it out, the book SHOWS you what to do and you just follow along. It keeps things as simple as possible.

Highly recommended for beginning bloggers.

I really thought this book was great, showing and giving more information than Discovering Computers. I recommend the book Publishing a Blog with Blogger for those who want to make a blog fast.

Chapters:

• Introduction- talks about what a blog is and how it works, what tools you need, and offers additional help, along with how to use the book.
• 1. Starting your blog- tells you where you have to go, set your account, name your blog, choose a template, viewing your dashboard, and signing in and out.
• 2. Writing your blog- tells you how to get down to the writing. How to add ,edit, and your posts, linking blogs, saving and publishing your draft, and formatting and your pictures.
• 3. Bloggoing from afar- tells you how to blog an email, blog from your toolbar, set up and label audio blogger , and also blog on your cell phone.
• 4. Personalizing your blog- tells how to add the description, more about templates and picking one, adding links, removing and renaming sections, adding your previous posts, changing headers and adding footers, unifying your color scheme, saving ,republishing, and backing up the templates , and changing the dates and time zone display.
• 5. Telling others about yourself- tells how to view and edit your profile, add photos to your profile, adding general info., blurbs, and searchable bits, searching others profiles and how to format your "about me".
• 6. Getting others to contribute- How to leave, view, allow, delete, stop, hide, and bar comments, adding and removing members, formatting members posts, and joining a blog.
• 7. Hosting your blog yourself- Tells you how to get a web host, web domain, switching to your FTP, FTP settings, testing, posting, and adding photos to your FTP'd blog, and removing you navbar.
• 8. Getting the word out- Shows how to List your blog, announce new posts, syndicate your blog, offer link to site feed, and how to index you blog.

Summary:
In Publishing a Blog with Blogger, the author helps you start a blog fast. Without any of detail that might side track you. Shows you how to set things up step by step.

It seems to be very easy to follow with colorful pictures and brief description on the steps you take. Anyone can start easily with this book.

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