Welcome to Week 2 of your quest!

What is a blog?

A blog (or 'weblog') is a form of website where entries are added and filed in date order, almost like a diary, with the most recent entries at the top. They can be used for news, comment, reflection and as an alternative to a professional website. Examples include Wordpress and Blogger. A 'blogroll' is a list of other interesting or useful blogs that you want to share with others. 'Microblogging' means sending brief updates and posts (between 40-160 letters long) to a personal blog through a service like Twitter. A 'post' is an article/comment/image that you publish on your website, wiki or blog. You can add special features, or 'widgets', to your blog to add interest - like news headlines or category headings. Widgets are the small boxes you see to the side of a blog or webpage that are pre-programmed to contain, text, pictures, RSS feeds and more. It is an easy way of adding extras to your site without needing to know any programming language.

The site we've chosen to use to help you learn about blogging is Wordpress.* This is the same service that the Coleg Llandrillo library LibeRaCe blog uses. Why not check it out to get more of an idea of what you can achieve with a blog.

Wordpress 

History: Launched 2003, open source software, mature product with 3-4 yearly upgrades/new launches 

Example of: blogging and social networking

Number of users: 3.1 million blogs hosted (as of May 2008 – claims to be largest blog host in the world)

Why use: Free, good spam filters, good formatting and media library file size, good customization

Good for: Daily blogging, adding items and different file types quickly, inviting others to write for you

Bad for: no set help pages, assumes good IT knowledge, can be slow on college network. 

Getting Started:

- To set up your account go to www.wordpress.com and click on  .

- Register a username, password and blog name

- Choose your blog page layout

- Write and publish a post

Don't forget to : 

- Record your username and password. You need these each time you want to add anything to your blog. 

- Register your blog address (http://.______.wordpress.com) with your Quest administrator (if you have one) 

 If you get stuck reply to the Quest Post to get help from other participants or see the guides on the Library Moodle

*the use of wordpress.com is only a suggestion. Feel free to use another provider of your choice like blogger.com or typepad.com.