The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog

Long-time weblogger Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog is an excellent introduction to the currently white-hot world of weblogs. Blood covers all the bases, from a history of the weblog form, through starting a blog of your own, and finally onto finding (and retaining) readers for your site. The book doesn't offer as much for the veteran blogger, but even the bloggeratti won't go away completely empty-handed -- Blood's weblog history provides a valuable common vocabulary for debating what is and isn't a weblog, and her discussion of weblog ethics should be required reading for anybody who claims to be serious about their weblogging.Blood begins the book in the obvious place, with a discussion of the history of the weblog format, and a functional definition of what a weblog is (and isn't). One issue with the word "weblog" as it is currently used is that it means little more than "website with time-stamped entries arranged in reverse chronological order". Blood attempts to expand on that definition by pointing out that the other thing weblogs have in common, in addition to chronological formatting convention, is "the primacy of the link": It is the link that gives weblogs their credibility by creating a transparency that is impossible in any other medium. It is the link that creates the community in which weblogs exist. It is the link the distinguishes the weblog -- or any other piece of online writing -- from old-media writing that has merely been transplanted to the Web.One of my primary objections to this section of the book was the contradiction between the above position and Blood's inclusion, earlier in the same chapter, of "blog"- and "notebook"-style sites under the weblogs banner. "Blog"-style sites, in the book's taxonomy, are the nano-journals that showed up in the wake of easy-to-use tools like Pitas and Blogger. These web-based weblogging applications made it easy to let the world know when you were getting up from your desk to go pee -- and thousands of people jumped at the chance to do just that. "Notebook"-style web sites, on the other hand, are characterized by longer chunks of content; they tend to resemble essay collections more than anything else. Both types of sites are markedly different in content and authorial intent from the traditional "filter" style weblogs -- collections of links, annotated with short (or sometimes not so short) descriptions, reviews, or reactions.The former two styles of sites seem to be to be fundamentally different than the latter style, primarily in the extent to which they're inwardly versus externally focused. "Filter" weblogs link almost exclusively to other sites, and they link heavily -- usually averaging at least one link per entry, if not more. "Blogs" and "notebooks", on the other hand, have a much lower frequency of external linking, and are much more self-referential and insular than "filter" style sites. The

When Rebecca Blood's "The Weblog Handbook" arrived in the mail, I was delighted to see that it was a slim volume. All of the great books on writing - Aristotle's "Poetics," Ezra Pound's "ABC of Reading," Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," - are slim volumes. I was not disappointed.Within the 195 pages that compose the book, all of the necessary territory is covered. She defines (or perhaps it is better to say she delineates) the phenomenon of the weblog, places it within the context of both Web and popular culture, and provides nuts and bolts stuff like how to purchase a domain name or choose the best weblog management tool. More importantly, she focuses on the writing process ("Weblogging is about personal expression, not about software"), and guides the reader through such weighty topics as the development of critical thinking skills, finding the appropriate voice, and building confidence in one's writing abilities. Some of this is good advices for all writers, but she also provides the basic considerations for creating content specifically for weblogs, including the appropriate way to credit links, and which conventions to follow in laying out your site to best accommodate your visitors. As a novice blogger (actually, I've learned that my site is more of a "notebook" than a "blog") I find this book to be indispensable. To be sure, there are plenty or resources on the Web for would be practitioners, but because the form is still relatively new, and there are widely varying ideas of what a weblog is, finding information online is often more confusing than helpful. "The Weblog Handbook" is comprehensive and coherent.

Rebecca Blood doesn't waste her time -- or yours -- with tips and tricks relating to a piece of software which is probably out-of-date before it is delivered to your door. She doesn't assume that her readers are "Dummies." She isn't interested in nudges and winks to the blogging community. Instead, she presents a passionate, lucid guide to the essence of blogging.In the 190 pages of text, Blood demonstrates over and again that blogging is all about self-discovery. You will most likely not find a huge audience, she tells us, but you will find that you are a better writer than you were before you started blogging. You probably won't be a huge influence on public policy, but you will hone your reasoning and filtering skills by engaging the topics you care about. You may not ever make a penny from your blog, but you can improve your reputation and your standing in your industry by becoming a resource and a reference point.For the most part, bloggers seem to be thoughtful people and I cannot imagine any weblog writer -- or any online diarist or creative writer, for that matter -- fiinishing this book without a renewed belief in the purpose and value of their endeavor.

I just finished re-reading The Weblog Handbook after having first read through it in depth this weekend. It's a great book, and the greatest compliment I can pay it is that it does an excellent job of keeping its author's voice. I focused on the presence of RCB's voice because I thought that no book could do justice to the topic of weblogs without being true to one of their defining characteristics, a strong personal perspective.As the book is clearly targeted at an audience that is already at least familiar with, and most likely patrons of, weblogs, I was a bit hesitant of the tone being too boosterish. Most of the "For Dummies" books (not that this is one) spend time trying to convince their audience to be enthused about a topic that they've already (1) bought a book about and (2) accepted their "dummy" status regarding. This book assumes you're already sold. While there is undoubtedly enthusiasm, there's a healthy dose of reality about what it takes to start and maintain a decent blog. ("If, after spending your workday at the computer, the last thing you want to do when you get home is turn on your PC, you should probably take up knitting or join a film club instead.")There is a deliberate aversion to getting too in-depth with any of the weblogging tools, which isn't surprising given the fact that Rebecca's Pocket is maintained with manually created HTML and FTP. I'd suggest that this is one area (the *only* area, actually) where the author's proclivities diverged from the interests many readers would have, as the cursory mentions of the tools as being essentially fungible ignore the reality that the overwhelming majority of webloggers use one of the handful of prominent tools like Blogger, Radio, LiveJournal and Movable Type. I'm willing to cede the argument that a discussion of those tools might have taken the book from Handbook territory into the Technical Guide realm.The most cogent and important thoughts in The Weblog Handbook have nothing to do with "Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining" a weblog, they have to do with understanding the social context and media implications of weblogs, both as readers and writers/editors. The first chapter details how weblogs promote social literacy, and the motif recurs throughout the book, prompting some thought-provoking sections on weblog ethics and responsible methods of promoting one's own site.I was concerned, on my first reading, with the few mentions of specific URLs and events like the World Trade Center attacks as points of reference. Another trip through the text removes a lot of my concern, as the points probably stood out more to me due to my perspective, and they're only used as context, and any worries that they might seem dated are silly in the context of a book that's about a phenomenon that's only a few years old. The whole *book* will, hopefully, seem dated in a relatively short time. The fact that Weblog Madness is mentioned a few times during the text and has since shut down

This is a very useful guide to weblogs: how to start one, how to grow an audience, how to deal with angry email, and how to move up in technical sophistication. There's also a lot of well-put advice on etiquette, protecting your privacy, and otherwise flourishing in the blogosphere, along with some historical background that most journalistic accounts of weblogging have missed. It's very well written, and the author's personality comes through in a very engaging fashion. Highly recommended.