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Creating a blog

A “blog”, short for “web blog” is an online diary or journal, organised in date order. Blogs are popular as a personal site – a way to share places that you have visited online, your daily life or thoughts on a particular subject. There are personal blogs on almost every imaginable subject. More recently businesses have discovered that a blog is a powerful way to communicate in a more informal manner with customers, to keep them up to date with industry developments, or highlight interesting features of products. Macromedia are a good example of a company that is using blogs in this way, you can read blogs written by several of their employees, such as John Dowdells here: http://www.markme.com/jd/.

 

In this article we will explore how to create a blog using one of the popular, and free to download blog applications that are available - Wordpress. This is the first of two tutorials looking at Wordpress, this one is suitable for absolute beginners with this tool and will look at the basic install and some of the most important configuration options once it is installed. Next time we will create a completely customised template for your blog and look at how to select which features you want to use.

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Free! Hot Topics from the Blogs: Autumn/Winter 2004

As things slow down for the festive season, those leading edge web developers keep pumping out new ideas. Here Ian Blackham has a quick run through blogdom and attempts to pick out a few nuggets.

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Free! Hot Topics from the Blogs: September 2004

As the summer draws to a close, minds turn to completing projects and starting up new ones, so this month our blog round-up, apart from maintaining its watching brief, also includes some links to developing resources you might find useful. 

Highlight spotted this month - details of sIFR a new Flash replacement technique.

Hot Topics from the Blogs is a monthly peer into the blogs of Web development movers and shakers, with the focus on highlighting recent postings that will stimulate and educate.

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Web Wonderland

Looking for inspiration for your next client? 

Has your muse left town? 

OK, well just to help you out a bit, SAHM (stay at home mum) and web aficionado Kate Blackham has been gawping through the archives of featured sites at the Macromedia Showcase, Cool Homepages and Wow Web Designs to pick out a handful of her favourite things.  

These aren't for the CSS only peeps – Kate can't wait to get her Flash, Shockwave and QuickTime plug-ins whirring and loves to allow pop-ups given half a chance.

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Beyond Web usability: Web credibility

There are a lot of web sites out here in cyberspace – how do you make yours stand out from the crowd?

Although design is important, as we've pointed out elsewhere, content is king. But that's not the end of the story – how do you present your content in such a way that it helps the viewer feel 'comfortable' with your site, that they feel your organisation is one they can do business with? In short how can you appear CREDIBLE?

In this free article, Trenton Moss gives us a few pointers on how you can make your websites have that little bit more about them.

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Free! Hot Topics from the Blogs: August 2004

It's August and most people have been on vacation, but there's still been enough happening on the blogs.

In this second peer into the blogs of Web development movers and shakers, Ian Blackham aims to highlight recent postings that will stimulate and educate.   

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FREE! Eyetracking and the Web

While recently looking over some of the articles in Linda Goin's recent series Web Design Mysteries, I was struck by how much design I just completely overlook when I scan a Web page. Many of her insights, while familiar to a skilled artist like herself were a complete revelation to me. 

Then while I was surfing the Web I came across a reference to eyetracking, sure I've heard of it before, but combined with Linda's articles this prompted me to delve a little deeper and try to find out what eyetracking studies had been done on Web sites and what the implications to Web developers may be. 

Here I aim to share what I've found in my brief investigation – feel free to share any of your insights by adding comments to the bottom of the article.

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Hot Topics from the Blogs: July 2004

There's a whole lot of technical information out there on the Web, from major supplier press releases to 'amateur' extension coders, from opinions to tutorials. But with so much out there what's important and what isn't, what is influential and what is one person's soapboxing?

In this brief article, Ian Blackham attempts to highlight and summarize a few of the discussions that have been taking place on some of the more influential blogs in the Web development community. Some of you may read these on a regular basis and even take part in the discussions, however for those that don't, we hope you'll find this (a) an interesting insight into future trends and design points, and (b) provide a starting point for some stimulating and educational web surfing.

 

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