Understanding Blogs

A blog is a simple tool for people to quickly and easily publish content. Posts to a blog can span any topic from reviews, vacation news, family events and happenings to work‑related issues, etc. They can be about any issue that relates to the daily activities of a person, group, or organization. Also, other readers can post their opinions or feedback as comments on these blog entries. In short, a blog is a place to conveniently share ideas and publish thoughts. Community Server archives posts automatically on a monthly basis.

There are a number of websites that provide a facility to easily create and set up a blog such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) from Google. From such websites, you can create your own blog instantly. Many companies have also developed blog-related applications where the users can plug in to their own web space. This gives more flexibility to users as they can manage their blog themselves instead of accessing it by using another URL. Community Server ships with a powerful blog application with which users can create and manage blogs for themselves or for their friends, customers, and employees. We will thoroughly examine all the aspects of building a blog using Community Server in this chapter.

We will analyze the concepts surrounding Community Server blogs with the help of a sample blog titled csbook. We will then explore how to manage the blog, post content, and format blog posts, along with other related topics.