Introducing the World of Blogging

Blogging is an evolutionary process, and blogs have evolved beyond personal journals to become tools for real journalism, business, and authorship.

A blog is a fabulous tool for publishing your diary of thoughts and ideas;

however, blogs also serve as excellent tools for business, editorial journalism, news, and entertainment. Here are some ways that people use blogs:

• Personal:
  A blogger can use a blog as a journal or diary. You’re considered a personal blogger if you use your blog mainly to discuss topics related to you or your life — your family, your cats, your children, or your interests (for example, technology, politics, sports, art, or photography)
• Business:
  A blogger can use a blog to promote her company’s business services or products. Blogs are very effective tools for promotion and marketing, and business blogs usually offer helpful information to readers and consumers, such as sales events and product reviews. Business blogs also let readers provide feedback and ideas, which can help a company improve its services.
• Media/journalism:
  Popular news outlets, such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, are using blogs on their Web sites to provide information on current events, politics, and news on a regional, national, and international level. These news organizations often have editorial bloggers, too.
• Professional:
  Professional bloggers, a category that’s growing every day, can blog for companies or Web sites. Blog networks, such as WeblogsInc.com, hire bloggers to write about certain topics. Additionally, several services match advertisers with bloggers, and the advertisers pay the bloggers to post about their products.

The WordPress

The WordPress software is a personal publishing system that uses a PHP and MySQL platform. It provides you everything you need to create on your blog. It publishes your content dynamically without having to program the pages yourself. In short, with this platform, all your content is stored in a MySQL database in your hosting account.

Using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)

You hear it a lot if you browse different Web sites that publish posts about WordPress: “WordPress is more than a blogging platform; it’s a full content management system.” What does that mean?
A content management system (CMS) is a platform that lets you run a full Web site on your domain. This means that WordPress, in addition to a blog, allows you to create pages and build additional features into your Web site that have nothing to do with the content on your blog.
A Web site and a blog are two different things. Although a Web site can contain a blog, a blog cannot contain a full Web site. We know it sounds confusing, but after you read this section and explore the differences between the two, you’ll have a better understanding.

Blog Vs Content Management System

[table width =”100%” style =”” responsive =”false”] [table_head] [th_column]Blog[/th_column] [th_column]Content Management System (CMS)[/th_column] [/table_head] [table_body] [table_row] [row_column]A blog is a chronological display of content — most often, written by the blog author. The posts are published and, usually, categorized into topics and archived by date. Blog posts can have comments activated so readers can leave their feedback and the author can respond, creating a dialogue about the blog post.[/row_column] [row_column]A Web site is a collection of published pages and different sections that offer the visitor a different experience. A Web site can incorporate a blog but usually, contains other sections and features. These other features include

• Photo galleries,
• E-commerce stores,
• Discussion forums,
• Social communities,
• Portfolios,
• Feedback forms and
• Static pages. [/row_column] [/table_row] [/table_body] [/table]