Customer Reviews

Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

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I know I've been blogging for awhile now, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to review this book... Blogging For Dummies by Brad Hill. Of course, some may say it's just the book I needed... :)

Contents:
Part 1 - The What, Where, Why, and How of Weblogs: Understanding Blogging at Last; Blogging Options; Living the Blogging Lifestyle
Part 2 - Starting a Blog Today: MSN Spaces; Yahoo! 360; Finding a Home in Blogger; Creating a TypePad Blog
Part 3 - Installing Your Own Blog Program: The Ins and Outs of DIY Blogging; Running a Movable Type Blog; Blogging with WordPress; Power Plus Ease in Radio Userland; Hybrid Blog Hosts - Power Without the Pain
Part 4 - Total Blog Immersion: Hooking into RSS Feeds; Rules of Blogosphere Citizenship; Blogging for Bucks (or Pennies); Using Your Real Voice - Podcasting; Photoblogging and Audioblogging
Part 5 - The Part of Tens: Ten Blog Engines and Directories; Ten Resources for the Power Blogger
Glossary; Index

It seems that when most people start to blog, they learn a bit about blogging in general and then jump right to a familiar tool like Blogger or MSN Spaces. That's all well and good, but your style might not be best served by the blog choice you made. Hill does a pretty good job in categorizing the most prevalent blog tools available today, and then giving a basic install/usage overview for each. I was familiar with some of these, but the basics of Movable Type and WordPress were something I hadn't explored. After reading Part 2 and 3, you should have a pretty good idea of which tool fits your style and your anticipated direction. At that point, you can go online and start diving into your new tool of choice.

Even if you're a blogger with some history, there's still a few items here that might have slipped off your radar. I wasn't aware of the audioblogging technology that allows you to embed a spoken clip into a blog posting. Not necessarily something I want to do, but good to know of. Part 5 - The Part of Tens - is always a good area to find sites you didn't know about (like a few of the blog search engines and directories). There are a couple of sites that I could benefit from, and I'll be checking those out...

This is probably a bit more than Uncle Joe would want if he's asking "what's a blog", and the alpha male techno-nerd will likely find it a bit simplistic or light on coverage. But for the average power user or technology person looking to explore blogging, this might just be the broad coverage they need to start to put things into context...

At 368 pgs, Blogging for Dummies certainly fits the "For Dummies" mould.

It is a massive volume, covering a lot of blogging ground. Obviously it's not going to go into every single area, and I felt the author covered most of the major bases. He's gone into blogging solutions that are hosted by companies such as MSN spaces, yahoo, blogger, typepad.

He talk talks about hosted solutions (much better in my opinion), like movable type and wordpress.
This is software you can install on your service, and you have freer rein over your blogging solution.

The book also has a section "Ten Blog Engines and Directories", which is a good start, for a generalist book. In comparison, specialist blogging ebooks like SecretBlogWeapon come with a 176 blog traffic generators. But I think this is a testament to the nature of this product.

"Blogging for Dummies" is a very general product, it's only intended to give you a brief intro of all the major blogging platforms.

If you are oriented towards profit-oriented blogging, you can look for SecretBlogWeapon (SBW) which only covers Wordpress (the most flexible and powerful blogging tool in my opinion). SBW covers adsense, includes optimization procedures for search engine optimization (SEO). Blogging for Dummies tries to cover all the basis, sometimes in the span of a page (which may be a little too brief!)

Specialist books are probably too advanced for pure newbies. Brand new bloggers, especially if they are complete computer klutzes are much better with blogging for dummies.

Pros: covers a lot of ground. provides overview of blogging. explains all the jargon like RSS, XML in simple-to-understand language.

Cons: this books trieds to do everything. focusing on a single platform might be better, especially for experienced users. The book is shallow on a lot of fronts. Perhaps intentionally so to avoid confusion for newbies.

Perhaps a companion volume could be launched to fill in the gaps. It can go more in-depth and provide a deeper understanding. After reading this book, one would still need to do more groundwork to master one of the blogging platforms.

I'd still recommend Wordpress.

Andrew Wee
Internet Marketing: Blogging Specialist

I found this book to be accessible, complete, well-organized, and entertaining. Brad Hill's conversational style reminds me of David Pogue - it's like having your funny, fast-talking, slashdot.org-loving techie best friend tell you what to do - a good thing for me, but might not suit people who prefer more technical guidebooks.

In the author's intro, he goes over the chapters and tells readers what they can skip depending on their level of technical expertise and blog ambition (getting a blog hosted vs. installing the blog software yourself, for example). I'm pretty computer literate (enough so that I was slightly embarassed when I bought the book - it's my first in the "For Dummies" series). I've done a lot of desktop publishing and typesetting, but am a newbie at Web page building. This book was written simply, but was definitely appropriate for my skill level - I read it in a day, and had my blog site set up the day after. I appreciated the simple language, bullet points, and many screenshots.

Other notable features: Hill has separate chapters for each of the major blog services (MSN, Typepad, Movabletype, WordPress), and the information presented is up-to-date (very important for the blog services that updated their software recently). Overall, it's a good choice for beginners in Web site building. Those with some experience who for some reason ignored the title of this book should opt for something in a more specialized series - one that doesn't cover everything from blogging and yoga - like the Visual Quickstart series.

Pros:
1. Humorously written.
2. Lots of screen captures.
3. Pretty thorough rundown of RSS.
4. Instruction on multiple platforms: MSN Spaces, Yahoo!, Blogger, TypePad, WordPress.
5. Solid references for key blogging Web sites.

Cons:
1. I don't know ... I find the layouts of these books busy, confusing, and distracting.
2. Not much on SEO.
3. The author tries to cover a pretty broad audience: business bloggers, personal bloggers, total beginners, and more sophisticated users.

Given the last point, the book might make a better reference guide than something you'd read cover-to-cover. But certainly it contains enough helpful information to justify the purchase.

I bought this because I have Bass Guitar for Dummies, and that one is fantastic, so I was hopeful.

I had been blogging for a few months and purchased this book in the hopes of learning more from the technical angle. Unfortunately, I already knew most of what it covers.

It might be beneficial to someone just beginning, but if you've already learned a lot --like me, through trial and error-- this may not be the one for you.

Hey, maybe I should review Bass Guitar for Dummies...

Blogging for Dummies innundates your mind with numerous options to select a blogging platform and launch your own space on the net. It's organized into manageable chunks that let you decide how to proceed with confidence.

Had I read this book before I launched my blogs, I believe my frustration levels would have been much lower and success much quicker, with fewer problems. The book also reveals beneficial ideas and tools for bloggers, whether new or at the veteran stage.

Chapter 8, The Ins and Outs of DIY Blogging, is the only chapter I found more confusing than necessary. While blogging is already a daunting process for some, it needn't be complicated by the technical instructions explained here.

The topics of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) and money-making options provide a well-rounded look at this subject.

Stay with the book's basic strategies for fast and easy setup, and you'll be blogging in no time.

This is not the most user friendly beginners book although it's a good try. The 'Idiot's guide' equivalent by McFreddies is a step above this one because it integrates the information better and draws better connections among blogging, html, web site design and a more experiential model. The writers' guidelines for writing these books includes making lots of jokes to make the reader/user less intimidated, but the ones here really don't work, and are more of a distraction than anything else. Although it is not necessary to include a whole lot of information on website architecture or code, just a bit would have been nice for beginners to get an idea of how websites/web logs are constructed, but there are none here.

Any "Dummies" book is worth it, especially when I needed this one to begin my first blog! And I have, now being fed across America, too!

Blogging for Dummies by Brad Hill is a terrific resource for new to moderate bloggers. I've been blogging for almost six months, but I learned an enormous amount of information from Hill's book. His writing is irreverent and witty and full of what you need to know to really make your blog stand out from the crowd. I still have to figure out how to shrink a picture to 50k, but once I get that down, there'll be no stopping me! The book covers Blogger.com, TypePad, Yahoo360, MSN, and several other sites in detail so a new user can jump write in and get a great site going. His instructions are basic and easy to follow, and he addresses the pros and cons of each site well with pictured examples. It had great info for me to get moving, but I think I'll end up purchasing this book, because he has a great deal of info inside for more experienced bloggers who want more control over their sites.

I found this book very insightful. I have been using the web for years and did not understand alot of the terms that I had heard being thrown around. Thanks to this book I do understand the terms now and am just about to start my own blog. I recommend this book to anyone needing the extra help with general and a little more indepth computer and world wide web concepts and terms.