Customer Reviews

Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools

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I picked up this book after deciding that I was going to turn my website into a blog. I had no backround in blogging and this book is geared towards the novice. Blogging is explained and then they go in to detail on using either Radio Userland, Blogger, or Movable Type to get your blog up on the web. The order of the chapters is kinda crazy to me but you can read them in any order you like I suppose. By the time I was done with the book (2 evenings) I was up and running under Radio Userland blogging away like an old pro. I borrowed this book from the library and only had it two days and wouldn't need to look at it again as all the information included is available on the web as well.

"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.

Essential Blogging appeals to the its audience as:

- an introduction to the tools of blogging
- a users manual to some of the more prolific blogging tools
- advice for those who might value the opinions of more well-known bloggers

Having been a dabbler in blogging for the past year, I find the introduction to blogging of little use. For me, the most useful contents are the chapters on Userland Radio, my blog tool of choice. The advanced chapter (ch. 6) is of specific value, as it details the mechanics of how the tool works 'under the hood', and how it can be customized. Although I only skimmed the chapters on Blogger and Moveable Type, those sections seem just as informative about their perspective tools, and should prove equally valuable to their users as the Userland chapters are to me.

The discussion of desktop blogging tools (ch. 2) is of equal value. It shows how one might use a more feature-rich editor in conjunction with the robust, content-management back-end of Userland. There is also a brief but informative discussion of the API's that make integration between blogging tools practical.

Of questionable value is the final chapter (ch. 10), which contains quotes from various bloggers opining the virtues of blogging and their own, personal experiences. Some of these comments are insightful. Some are clearly the pontifications of those who are legends in their own minds. Deciding which are which is left as an exercise to the reader.

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.

With its slow-and-steady pattern, "Essential Blogging" is the book that will initiate novices into the blogging ritual. It highlighted every important tactic used in today's Weblog: including vital hints on how to select, install, and run blogging utilities. It also advices its reader on how to integrate random entry display with a blog front-page.
This book has a set of easy-to-follow rules on how to create, maintain, and collaborate weblogs. And for those who already know what they want, it provided guides which would enable them set-up their systems.
However, its worst offence is that a great chunk of its information were overtly summarized: thus, ensuring that its reference-value is curtailed. Also, it failed to expatiate on blogging essentials like: Greymatter and Live Journal.
Still, the fact that it served nourishing tips and code examples, raised its profile. It is a good starting-block for weblog beginners; but, expert bloggers may afford to overlook it.

I too bought this book on the strength of the O'Reilly name. I expected to learn at least one or two new facts by reading this book. Not to sound arrogant, but this is a book I could have written myself. I've dabbled in BloggerPro, GreyMatter and MovableType, along with some other, more powerful CMSs (e.g., E107, GeekLog and Drupal).

Unless you've never written a blog before and are a virtual neophyte online, this book is not for you. It cursorily reviews only the "top two" blog tools, Blogger/BloggerPro/Blogspot and Movable Type. It also delves into quite a bit of detail about Bloxsom, which is understandable, I suppose, since Bloxsom was developed by one of the book's contributors. I don't need handbooks for tools I don't use. If someone is interested in trying out a particular content management system, I doubt they'd think to purchase this O'Reilly book to help them do so, particularly since both Blogger and Movable Type have excellent websites and fora for their users to hash out installation problems.

The book starts out with a minimum of information about blogging and its origins. Delves not at all into what blogging is now or may potentially become. There's no insight here.

This book, in trying to be all things to all bloggers, fails miserably and merely becomes nothing to more people than it should have.

My best suggestion for a great book ABOUT BLOGGING is Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook. Spend your money on that; I promise that's one book you won't want to part with.

Essential Blogging focuses on a few blogging tools (Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type and Blosxom). If you are a "blogger" already, only the parts that refer to your favorite blogging tool are interesting. Most of the subjects will be familiar. You will have learned it by yourself after using your specific blogging tool for a few days...
I really learned some new things (I use Blogger Pro) - but I don't think it's worth buying the book. Reading it from your local library? Absolutely worth it!
For new bloggers, who want to get an overview of the tools, the first chapters are really nice. But the chapters describing the tools are too specific to be of any help.
One other thing: the continuous development of additions to the blogging tools makes all blogging oriented books "obsolete" when they hit the shelves.

Before I read this book, I had never heard the term "blogging" before. But as I read the book's first chapter, which gives a good overview of what it is, I realized I'd seen "web logs" on several different sites. So now I have some familiarity with blogging.

The rest of the book is devoted to various software to be used in setting up and maintaining your web log. Among the products decribed in detail are Blogger (and Blogger Pro in a later chapter), Radio UserLand, and Bloxsom. Each of their features are explained in good detail, with lots of screen shots included. Not quite a tutorial, but still good explanations of what each product does.

It's piqued my interest in setting up my own "blog."

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.

If you want to start blogging but don't know where to start, try this book. It is an overview of several applications that help you maintain a blog. You can read through the book to get a feel for which solution would work for you, and find the initial steps for setting up your blog.

If you already have a blog, this book won't be very helpful. It does not go beyond the basics. For example I chose Movable Type as my solution. Now that I've got it going the book is no longer a useful reference, I depend on the Movable Type documentation instead.

For total newbies: A blog is a website which has new entries added on a regular basis. It could be a journal, or a series of reviews, or a news page. "Blogging" is the act of maintaining such a website. I used a blog to keep friends and family updated while adopting a baby in another country. Do a google search and you will find 100s of blogs used in all sorts of ways.