This is a session of general orientation towards what blogging is all about, and a quick and easy guide to starting your own blog. It is oriented towards Manila, as this is the tool in use on all of the Berkman Center Weblogs, but I expect that many of you will be using other software, so I will tty to keep the information general enough that everybody will take something useful home. What I really hope for is that some of the people here today will run right home and have their own blogs up and running by this evening. If that actually happens, please take a moment to let me know - it would be extremely self-validating....
OK? Well, lets get started with out tour of the Blogosphere...
What is a Blog?
Why do I want/need a blog?
Brief history of Blogging
The Blogger Ethos: Types of Blogs
Referencial (lots of links)
Analytic (expert/subject area)
Educational (Course-related)
Colaborative (mention WIKIs here?)
Choosing your tools
On-line solutions
Stand-alone solutions
Finding a server for your blog
Berkman (since this is where the conference takes place) and Rules of Use
Walk-through of create-a-blog (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/createSite/)
Walk-around a new site
Calendar
Main message pane
Default links, how to customize this list
Descriptive paragraph
Membership link: define managing editor, editor, member, user
3
Functional How-to's
How to create a story
How to upload a picture
How to combine pictures, messages and stories
How to edit something once its been posted
How to add live links to postings
How to change the way your blog looks
How to check your blogs statistics
4
Title
Commentary
Text
Link
Picture
Introduction to aggregators and RSS
How to let others subscribe to your stream
Multimedia (animation, video, sound)
Messing with the templates
The future of blogging
All material © 2003