Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools

by Cory Doctorow, Cory Doctorow, J. Scott Johnson

Anyone can run a blog (an online journal). From personal diaries to political commentary and technology observations, bloggers are making their voices heard around the world. Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and show how to get your blog up and running. You'll learn the ingredients of a successful blog, and then get detailed installation, configuration and operation instructions for the leading blogging Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and Blosxom. After showing you how to acquire, set-up, and run these leading software packages, Essential Blogging takes you through the more advanced features, so that by the time you finish, you'll be up and blogging with the best of them. Essential Blogging Written by prominent bloggers and authors of blogging tools, Essential Blogging is a no-nonsense guide to the technology of blogging.

Genres: Technology

260 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2002

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Dane Cobain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should preface this review by pointing out that this book was published back in 2002, back before social networking and before blogging went mainstream. In fact, the book was written and released before Google bought Blogspot and before WordPress was even launched, both of which happened in 2003.

Sure, the authors are all active in the blogosphere in some way or another, and they explain things with relative simplicity, considering you have to mess around with cgi scripts and command lines. It's just that it's no longer relevant, and unfortunately this is an example of a book that hasn't aged. I still have big respect for the writers, particularly Cory Doctorow.

Saying that, there are a lot of typos, and that's part of the reason for its low score. I'd be more inclined to forgive it if it was error-free, but the 'Blogging Voices' chapter at the end had clearly been copied and pasted from e-mails with little-to-no copy editing. "I have met people because of my weblog, even I got my present job because of it," for example. Or "You can find related informationat the fog density you feel comfortable , or ask the author a question."

Still, worth a read if you're interested in the history of blogging. But not, if not.

[Simone Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much has changed with blogging tools since this was written, but it was nice to flip through- and I did get some suggestions and insights out of it that will change the way I go about blogging.