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· Introduction
I have been involved with the Internet ever since it arrived in Banswara. I have thoroughly published my thoughts,
researches and interacted with hundreds of like minded people around the world. At present, I maintain two personal websites
and two weblogs. Recently, at National Conference on “Mass Communication Revolution and Tribal Awakening”, organized
by Department of Sociology of our college and held on February 9-10, 2007, I presented a paper entitled “Wiring up an
Information Revolution and Promoting Education and Youth Employment in Tribal India through Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT)”. Just after conference was over, I could no longer resist publishing the same paper on my website in order to get a wider audience but now I realize that
I should have better published it through my weblog. A few months ago, while updating my website, one of my Malaysian friends, a research scholar, suggested
me on-line to create a weblog instead; she also advocated advantages of a weblog which is more interactive than a static website.
I had only a vague idea about blogging until I knew from her the advantages of a weblog over the website. Knowledge of advantages
of blogging is important and worthwhile to any one who wants to mark his presence on WWW in a modern and effective manner
and be part of a global community of several thousands users utilizing the same technology with success. Blogs are sufficiently
valuable to justify your investment of time or interest in them. Over the past few years, blogs have taken over the Web by
storm. More and more people are "blogging" and as a result blogging has become very popular, effective tool or medium right
now to express our thoughts, write articles, publish them, invite people for criticism, create a friend circle and interact
with people around the world in real time. Merriam-Webster Inc declared that the word "blog" was the most searched term on
their website in year 2004. Many newbie are a little behind in publishing their Blogs because they don't really understand
the difference between a website and a blog; they don’t know how a blog works differently from a site? They are confused
at this point.
So what are blogs and what is blogging? Blogs are websites that allow you instantly publish content about
a certain topic or theme. Blogs have for a long time been defined as an "online journal or diary". These definitions have
evolved from various attempts to describe how much blogs have developed as a useful tool for publishing and communicating
on the Internet. A blog as an online diary is the more common definition used but you will see new definitions for blogs as
blogs become more of a business and marketing tool online.
·
The Difference between a Website
and a Blog
·
Website
Any interconnected set of web pages that
you visit is a website. A website can be accessed by typing in the domain name
or url (i.e. www.domainname.com) in your browser. A webpage is a document that contains HTML. A website generally includes
a homepage located on the same server; it is prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or
organization. A regular website is designed to publish content for all kinds of reasons. Regular websites are static and infrequently
updated. They are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
A website may incorporate many elements, including but not limited to a blog, a forum, static pages, e-commerce solution.
Hopefully these are interconnected in a seamless way so as to further the aims and mission of the individual or organization
running it. In order to make changes to a webpage, one can use Web editing tools such as Frontpage, Dreamweaver, GoLive, Homesite
or a simple editor such as Notepad. Once updated, the page is uploaded on your server via FTP. These tools allow you to create
beautiful sites with compelling content, but they don't allow neophytes or non-technical people to maintain content or add
new content. And so even with these sophisticated tools, most Web sites are static creations, and most individuals and organizations
view their Websites as nothing more than digital brochures. Web-based Web page editors coupled with guestbooks are very nice
tools for letting non-tech users add new content to their Web pages.
It is an online diary or publication;
a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log or simply blog. Therefore, a
blog is a subset of webpage. While there are no blog police and no laws stating that a site must have certain capabilities
to truly be a Weblog, it is nonetheless true that Articles, Postings, Track back, Timestamp, Comments and RSS feeds are the
popular features of a blog. It contains short posts or articles displayed in reverse chronological order. This is a dramatic
difference because it changes a monologue, a "brochure," into a dialogue with readers or customers. A blog is an application
but a website doesn’t have to be one. Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often.
Blogs are also said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as mutual
conversations that are more personal than websites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is
generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from visitors.
Blogs are very popular right now. Blogs
have given rise to millions on the Internet having conversations and networking ideas as they are powerful publishing tools
that provide constantly updated content, fast communication, and they allow you to instantly communicate on the Internet in
real-time. Professors, scientists, journalists and politicians have created their own blogs to communicate their ideas, thoughts
and views to interact with a large audience and influence people. Blogs have
grown so popular and so powerful so quickly that businesses and marketers are now using them as business boosters and increase
their reach in current and new markets as well as create more efficient communications structures. Blogs are very efficient!
They are cheap, simple and they distribute or pass information quickly. Blogs have many uses for online communications and
content publishing. Blogging is exciting and it represents powerful opportunity for you to participate in this new frontier
of profitable Internet publishing and communication.
Let me summarize the main features of a blog as follows.
- No difference in terms of looks. A blog looks as
professional and slick as any other Website.
- There is no need for a traditional webmaster
to maintain it. You can publish directly from your computer.
- You can use any type of computer to publish
(Mac, Linux, PC)
- There is no HTML or other coding for you to learn
- Changes you make to the site happen in real-time.
Content can be easily organized under different categories you define yourself. You can easily change, update, and add new
categories. Blogs really let you separate the content from the presentation; if you want to focus on presentation, you can
edit template files, but if you're just interested in maintaining existing content or adding new content, you can focus on
that, too.
- The pages you create are automatically archived chronologically
and by category.
- Readers can subscribe to your blog and receive each
and every one of your articles in their emails without having to come to your site.
- You have maximum immediacy in publishing anything.
From thought to online page, articles, audio, video it takes no much time if you have a broad band connection.
- You can publish images with very little effort. No
quality difference with a traditional Website. Can make site changes and content changes with minimal effort and time. Any
page can be edited instantly.
- If you want, you can invite comments from readers;
they can comment and provide public feedback to your articles if you decide so.
- An effective search engine is already integrated
to your blog. Traffic and number of visitors to your site are automatically measured at no extra cost.
- Page titles are automatically set to reflect your
content titles for best indexing by major search engines.
- An RSS feed is integrated in the blog allowing individuals
to receive your content through newsreader and aggregators.
- It can easily reference other content and articles
available online.
- You have no need to use FTP or to transfer files
manually to your server.
- Finally, you can be part of a global community of
several millions users utilizing the same technology with success.
This is a preliminary list. I hope that it gives a good initial
idea of the differences; you are looking between a website and a blog. The current generation of Weblog tools; they are indeed
quite powerful and capable tools for managing even the largest and most complex Websites or weblogs. They’re quite flexible.
If you would like to start publishing your own blog, but don’t have Web hosting, or you are wary of installing software
package, you may want to look at a free hosted service. Some of these services include, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal.
All of these services are freely managed for you. Blogpost, Blogspot, Tripod and many other free website providers offer you
space on web to create website and weblog free of cost. All you have to do is sign up, choose a template and start blogging.
Several people are using these services as they allow people to create new pages on the fly simply by filling in a form. They
also help them to customize the look of their template to match the rest of their website.
Last but not the least; I would like to urge authorities
in our Department of Higher Education to run a blog in addition to existing website (http://collegeeducation.rajasthan.gov.in).
Our website run by Office of the Commissioner, Department of Higher Education, Jaipur has many errors, mainly because of lack
of timely updating. On the homepage, message of honorable Chief Minister and Education Minister is either missing or links
fail to work. In my frequent visits to the website, I have observed that lists of principals and vice principals remained
outdated for a long time until it was last updated on 04/02/2007. For example, Professor Sushil Bhatanagar was promoted to the post of vice principal
in our college, but site still showed the same post as vacant for a long time until it was updated on 04/02/2007. At the time of writing of this article i.e. dated: 25/02/2007, post of the principal in our college is still vacant according to the website but the fact
is that Professor Agrawal is currently
the principal of the college. This is the tip of iceberg only; many more shortcomings on the part
of delayed updating can be mentioned. To avoid it, the site needs to be updated weekly at least but it's very rare for a traditional
Website to be updated more frequently than once every month or two. The sluggishness to get the website updated timely is
obvious as office needs to depend on web master for the maintenance and update of the website. To provide teaching community
an opportunity to interact with each other, the Office of the Commissioner has also raised a Yahoo Group but traffic and participation
of teaching community seems to be miserably low. To address these shortcomings, blogging can be a better option.
I think I could go on quite a bit longer on the subject but paucity of space does not permit me to give
more details about the blogging here. Even if you aren't a fan of blogging and consider it to be a fad or fashion, I still would like to persuade you to learn more about blogs as a way to renovate your
website and make maintenance, updates, and adding new content far and far easier.
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