What is a blog?

Originally called a 'weblog' a blog is a very popular form of communicating with people (or clients) online, acting as an excellent platform for distributing fresh content such as media or news. A blog can exist as part of an existing static website or as an individual website, not attached to another. Owners and authors post on the blog at their discretion and pages are usually displayed in a chronological order from most recent backwards. A blog is a great way to introduce interactivity into a website as users are generally able to comment on posts or leave links to their own blog posts, establishing relationships within the blog community (referred to as the 'blogosphere').

The kind of media displayed on a blog is entirely up to the author(s) and depends on the layout and structure of the blogging platform setup. Additional 'widgets' or 'gadgets' enhance the functionality of a blog platform and allow incorporation of media such as audio or video. The most widely used blogging platforms are Wordpress and Blogger which offer different functionalities and ease-of-use, though there are many other platforms available.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a blogging system that relies on the programming language PHP and the database management system MySQL. It is 'open source' meaning that it is designed and developed by the programming community and users are free to customise WordPress as they like once it is installed. Originally released in 2003 as a blogging system WordPress has slowly progressed to become a very popular method for running a website as opposed to solely a blog. There are a large number of 'widgets' available on the internet to allow WordPress users to customise their installation for their specific requirements. WordPress is an incrediblely flexible platform for distributing content via the medium of the internet and is very popular however a higher level of IT (Information Technology) knowledge is required as opposed to making use of Blogger which offers a much better entry point to the world of blogging for the novice user.

WordPress is the preferred choice for many website designers as the wide-scale community support has led to the development of 'widgets' that increase functionality of the basic WordPress platform. There are widgets for the most commonly required components of a website, thus reducing the amount of time required to create a fully-functional website. In spite of this, to create a unique WordPress website or blog a user would have to have at least a basic working knowledge of both PHP and HTML otherwise the template and widgets would not be fully customisable.

What is Blogger?

Blogger is a blog publishing and hosting platform offered by Google as part of its suite of web services and applications and is a very easy way to publish a blog on the internet. As part of Google's new design it was announced that Blogger will (or has already been) renamed to Google Blogs. Blogger offers less functionality and customisation options than other blogging platforms that are available to blog authors however it is also a much easier and more accessible platform making it the ideal choice for someone that does not have computer or internet knowledge. Blogger was originally launched in 1999 by Pyra Labs and was acquired by Google in 2003 helping to build its portfolio of products and web services it offers to Google Account holders. Due to its ease-of-use Blogger has become one of the most popular websites in the world (via the blogspot.com domain) and at the time of writing was ranked Number 6 globally.

Blogger automatically integrates all images with Picasa Web Albums, an online photo sharing service from Google. This integration allows for commenting and sharing of images and albums through the Blogger platform and is a simple way for novice users to integrate media and interactivity into their blog without nay knowledge of coding. Blogger templates offer customisation options and extra functionality can be added to your blog layout making use of predefined 'gadgets' which include photo slide shows, tag clouds and many more. Custom HTML can also be inserted which further allows customisation and enhancement of the Blogger blogging system, though it still remains more limited than other offerings.

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