Blogging is one of the easiest and most fun activities that you can engage in. It is understandable, however, that for those who are quite new at it, things could seem a little confusing at first. This is especially true when one encounters a lot of new terms that may seem intimidating. Obviously, the trick is in learning these terms and understanding what they mean. After a while, you will know the ropes very well and recite these terms in your sleep. Here are some of the most common – and important – blogging terms that you should know at the outset.
Atom – Another popular feed format developed as an alternative to RSS.
Blog Carnival – A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.
Blog client – (weblog client) is software to manage (post, edit) blogs from operating system with no need to launch a web browser. A typical blog client has an editor, a spell-checker and a few more options that simplify content creation and editing.
Blogger – Person who runs a blog. Also blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site. Rarely: weblogger.
Blogroll – A list of blogs on a blog (usually placed in the sidebar of a blog) that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs. Possibly a play on the the term logrolling.
You place links to your friends’ blogs in your blogroll.
Blogosphere – All blogs, or the blogging community. Also called blogistan or, more rarely, blogspace. Example: There a millions and millions of blogs in the blogosphere today.
Dashboard – When you login to your blogging account, it is the first screen with all controls, tools and functions.
Permalink – Permanent link. The unique URL of a single post. Use this when you want to link to a post somewhere.
Backlinks – What Google counts in its algorithm for measuring how sites rank. Premium backlinks are required for securing top 5 positions for many keywords.
Pingback – The alert in the TrackBack system that notifies the original poster of a blog post when someone else writes an entry concerning the original post. It’s like linking back to the original web page.
Plugins – Small files that add improved functionality and new features. WordPress plugins can greatly improve your blog usage and interactivity
Post – An entry written and published to a blog. Basically, this is what YOU write!
RSS – Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.
RSS aggregator – Software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on their favourite blogs. Also called a reader, or feedreader.
RSS feed – The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.
Subscribe – The term used when a blogs feed is added to a feed reader like Bloglines or Google. Some blogging platforms have internal subscriptions, this allows readers to receive notification when there are new posts in a blog.
Templates – used on the “back end” of a blog that work together to handle information and present it on a blog.
Theme – CSS based code that when applied to the templates will result in visual element changes to the blog. The theme, as a whole, is also referred to as a blog design.
Terms and definitions courtesy of Wikipedia and Quick Online Tips.
Originally posted on November 12, 2009 @ 5:08 am