Blog is a combination of the words web and log. Blogs are a place on your website where you write regular articles. The articles can be about subjects you have expertise in, news about your business, general musings and so on. Blogs are useful for:

• Cultivating a regular audience.
• Showcasing your expertise in a field.
• Keeping your website fresh with regular content updates. Search engines like regularly updated websites.

Blogs can be written by one author or several. A blog can be one section of a website, or a website unto its own. The tone of a blog can be whatever suits the topic best, be it professional, casual, humourous, angry, something else or a combination.

Blog Functionality

A blog is more than just the article itself. The article on its own is basically just a web page. To make a blog you need the following functionality:

• A robust commenting system to allow conversations about the blog article to take place.
• RSS feed.
• Archives which organise blog posts into categories.

Blogging Tools

The WordPress CMS is the premier blogging tool. WordPress was originally built as a blogging platform and does all the heavy lifting in implementation. As such, a blog is one of the easiest features to implement in a website.

There are also blogging websites specifically designed for bloggers who don’t want to build their own website. The most popular blogging websites are Blogger and Tumblr.

Further Reading

You can find more information on blogging at these resources:

• Wikipedia blog article and
• The WordPress Codex – Introduction to Blogging