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 software: 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 covers:

• the important components of a blog and a blog post

• installing and configuring the tools

• a survey of desktop blogging clients

• advice and experience from real-world bloggers

• hosted blogging with Blogger and Blogger Pro

• desktop blogging with Radio Userland

• server blogging with Movable Type

• posting, editing, and deleting blog entries

• adding pictures to blog entries

• syndicating your stories with RSS

• consuming RSS feeds with Radio Userland

• customizing the appearance of your blog with templates

• managing and customizing archives of blog entries

• adding comments to your blog

• self-hosting your blog vs using a blog-hosting service

• going under the hood with the Blosxom blogging system

Written by prominent bloggers and authors of blogging tools, Essential Blogging is a no-nonsense guide to the technology of blogging.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

Poorly Edited, Minorly Informative - 2003-03-10
Reviewer Rating:
The book does say that if you are currently running a blog, a lot of the information contained will not be new, so I understand they are marketing to a newbie crowd. However, even for newbies, I really don't think the information contained therein is very useful. Mostly do to poor editing and layout. For example, in the first chapter they include screen shots to show you what a blog looks like.. seems reasonable enough. However, when the author is talking about including a hyperlink to whatever page his post may be talking about, they give full page wide screenshot of the word "Link"... it's just this big empty white space with a tiny word... "Link" just floating in the middle of it. Totally unhelpful.

Read this before you start blogging - 2003-05-10
Reviewer Rating:
Reading this book before you get started with a blog will save you time, money, and frustration. It will give you a fantastic overview of what is available as far as platforms and tools for blogging. It is not a reference, and it omits a lot of things one may wish to do with their blog. But it will be helpful to the novice. While this is a beginner's book, it is not written at a "Dummy" level, and the typical computer user will be right at home. The only disadvantage of the book is that once you zero in on a particular blog management system (e.g., Blogger) the sections dealing with the other systems are no longer particularly useful.

A good guide to some specific software - 2003-07-25
Reviewer Rating:
"Blogging" (the practice of keeping a public on-line journal to record personal thoughts, observations and links), is hot news on the internet these days. Many of the best-known names in the business keep such journals, so it's not surprising that the book publishers want to cash in.

Things in the world of blogging move fast. Minor celebrities rise and fall, new software is continually being released, new jargon is invented. It's hard for a paper book to keep up. There are some aspects of blogging which are gaining some permanancy. Unfortunately, this book only skims those topics, preferring to spend nearly 200 pages describing how to use particular (late 2002) versions of a few blogging tools.

The most incisive and thought-provoking part of the book is the last ten pages - interesting quotes from a range of bloggers. It's the only bit which shows any of the excitement and "buzz" of blogging and gets you wanting to get involved.

This is not a bad book. But it's not really the book described in its own advertsing. If you want a rough guide to comparing, installing and using a small selection of the well-known blog software offerings, this book is right for you. If you want a more thoughtful and detailed overview of what blogging is all about, why you should do it, what the terminology means, or how it works "under the hood", keep looking.

Not enough code for me - 2003-07-14
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book hoping for a little more code (html or java) to help me design my own weblog, but it left me hanging. It gives a great description of what a weblog is and how to get it up and running, but lacks in design elements.

Helpful for the beginner. - 2009-02-01
Reviewer Rating:
This was a curiosity read. I would consider myself a beginner blogger and found some of the contents to be useful and some of it not.

Overall this book is an introduction for a novice. You get a discussion for blogger, moveable type, radio userland, blogger pro, and a couple I had not heard of called blosxum and blagg.

I read the chapters on blogger, blogger pro and radio userland and found them interesting to a degree. I skimmed the rest.

I found the chapter on tools to be the most valuable as I really don't have any. I am looking into some of them to streamline my blogging efforts.

The final chapter contains quotes from various bloggers. I really don't see the value of it and wonder if it's just space filer.

Overall, this is not a bad book but I don't think it will remain on my shelf after my skills and knowledge improve.

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