No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog

Till this page, you are already a "bloggist", a blog expert. You can set up a blog, customize the layout as you want, to support the idea you want to share. You are able to create complicated script to boost your blog performance. Are you really a "bloggist". Is that skill enough? Unfortunately, no. Blog is about idea. The power of a blog is in the idea it spreads not on how the blog is visualized. Blog can steer opinion with what it shares not with its lay out, with its words not with its color. Therefore, what is the idea you want to blog? Ups... you don't have it? Take an easy, It's not the end. Don't worry, I have the prescription.


Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Margaret Mason
• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (August 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032144972X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321449726
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.4 inches

Tired of filling up your blog with boring posts? Take the next step and get inspired to create something unique. Author Margaret Mason shows you the way with this fun collection of inspirational ideas for your blog. Nobody Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog is a unique idea-book for bloggers seeking fun, creative inspiration. Margaret gives writers the prompts they need to describe, imagine, investigate and generate clever posts.

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Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content

Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Biz Stone
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1st edition (September 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735712999
• ISBN-13: 978-0735712997
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches

Turn your home page into a microportal with fresh content that will keep readers coming back. The first hands-on book on building blogs, this is an excellent tutorial for new bloggers, and includes many advanced techniques for veteran bloggers. Simply put, web logging, known as blogging, is an easy way of updating a web page via a browser without the hassle of launching an FTP client or HTML editor. With all the templates, add-ons, and extra features associated with building this microportal, the blog is a new take on the home page. The blog brings the voice of its creator to the surface, builds it into the design, and keeps the content fresh and meaningful. This book features hands-on tutorials for building a blog, adding a user based commenting system, adding team members, syndicating with JavaScript, adding searches to a site, and much more. This is the book for creative web-enthusiasts looking for the "next thing" and it's the first book of new ideas and advanced tutorials for bloggers already numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

From the Back Cover

Turn your home page into a microportal with fresh content that will keep readers coming back. The first hands-on book on building blogs, this is an excellent tutorial for new bloggers, and includes many advanced techniques for veteran bloggers. Simply put, web logging, known as blogging, is an easy way of updating a web page via a browser without the hassle of launching an FTP client or HTML editor. With all the templates, add-ons, and extra features associated with building this microportal, the blog is a new take on the home page. The blog brings the voice of its creator to the surface, builds it into the design, and keeps the content fresh and meaningful. This book features hands-on tutorials for building a blog, adding a user based commenting system, adding team members, syndicating with JavaScript, adding searches to a site, and much more. This is the book for creative web-enthusiasts looking for the "next thing" and it's the first book of new ideas and advanced tutorials for bloggers already numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

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Blog Design Solutions

Time to go more sophisticated. Since this post, blog engines are not always Blogger or WordPress. So much can be learn to suit your needs. Cheers!



Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Phil Sherry, Andy Budd, Simon Collison, and Michael Heilemann
• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: friends of ED; 1 edition (February 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590595815
• ISBN-13: 978-1590595817
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches

Blogging has moved rapidly from being a craze to become a core feature of the Internetfrom individuals sharing their thoughts with the world via online diaries, through fans talking about their favorite sports teams or music, right up to serious business minds discussing industry futures. And that includes you, right? If you haven't got a blog already, you want to start one, and want to find out how. If you have already got one, you want to know how to customize it, and make it look cooler than everybody elses. In either case, this is the ideal book for you. In this book, a team of renowned web designers take you through the ins and outs of putting together great blogs. They waste no time harking on about the philosophy of blogs, or the community behind them. Instead, they get straight to the practical details, showing how to set up a basic blog in some of the world's most popular blogging engines -- Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, WordPress, and Textpattern. With your blog set up, they then show you how to build great looking, usable layouts for your blog. The last chapter even hows you how to build your very own PHP/MySQL-based blog engine! With this book in hand, youll have found your way to blog heaven in no time!

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WordPress Complete: set up, customize, and market your blog

Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Hasin Hayder
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811892
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811893
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches

Wordpress is a simple and powerful way to start blogging. If you're not an IT expert but want to use a state of the art blogging system to give your blog the best chance of success, while giving you the time to focus on content and your readers, WordPress is the right system for you, and this book is the right place to start. It will give you a rapid and straightforward introduction to the rich and powerful features of WordPress and get you up and running with a state of the art blog as quickly and painlessly as possible. WordPress is an open source blog engine released under GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versality and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

If you want to create powerful, fully-featured blogs in no time, this book is for you. This book will help you explore WordPress showing you what it offers and how to go about building your blog with the system. You will be introduced to the main aspects of a blog - users, communities, posts, comments, news feeds - and learn how to manage them using WordPress. You will develop the skills and confidence to manage all types of content, be it text or images, on your blog, and also understand how users interact with the blog. In working through the book you'll be inspired as well as informed, and have the capability and the ideas for make your blog cutting edge and exciting to maximise its impact. From this book you'll learn about: Installing and configuring WordPress on a local development machine or a web hosting service Managing posts and comments Working with Image galleries, calendars, etc. Organising users and Communities Creating and Installing themes to control the page layout Linking to the outside world - Feeds, Syndication, and Podcasting Customising Widgets and Plugins Using WordPress as a regular CMS Written in a clear, easy to read style, the book takes you the essential tasks required to create a feature-rich blog as quickly as possible. From initial setup to customizing modules, each task is explained in a clear, practical way using an example blog developed through the book. Who this book is written for This book is a beginner's guide to WordPress, for people who are new to blogging and want to create their own blogs in a simple and straightforward manner. It does not require any detailed knowledge of programming or web development, and any IT confident user will be able to use the book to produce an impressive blog. The table of contents is: WordPress and the World of Blogging Getting Started with WordPress Choosing and Installing a Theme Blog Your Heart Out Non-Blog Content Feeds, Syndication, and Podcasting Getting the Theme Tailor- Made for You Managing Users and Building Communities Widgets and Plugins Administrator's Reference.

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Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools

Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Shelley Powers, Cory Doctorow, J. Scott Johnson, and Mena G. Trott
• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (August 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596003889
• ISBN-13: 978-0596003883
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.6 inches

Anyone can run a blog (an online journal). From personal diaries to political commentary and technology observations, bloggers are making their voices heard around the world. Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and show how to get your blog up and running. You'll learn the ingredients of a successful blog, and then get detailed installation, configuration and operation instructions for the leading blogging software: Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and Blosxom. After showing you how to acquire, set-up, and run these leading software packages, Essential Blogging takes you through the more advanced features, so that by the time you finish, you'll be up and blogging with the best of them. Essential Blogging covers:

• the important components of a blog and a blog post
• installing and configuring the toolsa survey of desktop blogging clients
• advice and experience from real-world bloggers
• hosted blogging with Blogger and Blogger Pro
• desktop blogging with Radio Userland
• server blogging with Movable Type
• posting, editing, and deleting blog entries
• adding pictures to blog entries
• syndicating your stories with RSS
• consuming RSS feeds with Radio Userland
• customizing the appearance of your blog with templates
• managing and customizing archives of blog entries
• adding comments to your blog
• self-hosting your blog vs using a blog-hosting service
• going under the hood with the Blosxom blogging system

Written by prominent bloggers and authors of blogging tools, Essential Blogging is a no-nonsense guide to the technology of blogging.

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Blogging For Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us

Amazon's Book Description

• Author: Brad Hill
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471770841
• ISBN-13: 978-0471770848
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1 inches

If you want to give yourself a Web presence without spending a lot of time or money, a blog is your answer and this is your guide. Blogs (Web logs) are short, diary-like entries on a Web site that has a chronological, journal format. Fun or informative, but not formal, blogs are easy to set up, maintain, and update. You can share your
personal, stream-of-consciousness musings or your expertise on any subject ranging from your family vacation to world peace. This guide helps beginners (even technophobes) get started fast, with the essential info on:

• The elements of blogs, such as entries, sidebars, categories, comments, and index pages
• The different types of hosting services, from free to fee and from “turn key” services that are easy-to-use to DIY programs
• Details on two popular, free “social community” hosted Web services that are ideal for casual bloggers—MSN Spaces and Yahoo! 360
• The scoop on Blogger, a popular free hosted service that has some community tools like the social networks, but is basically blog-intensive
• DIY blogging, covering three of the most powerful and flexible blog programs—Movable Type, WordPress, and Radio Userland
• Hooking into RSS feeds to distribute your blog entries beyond your site
• Choosing a newsreader
• Ways to raise the visibility of your blog and make money from blogging

Complete with step-by-step instructions and lots of screen shots, this guide walks you through everything from setting up your blog and posting your first entry to adding photos, audio, and more. It includes the URLs of lots of sample sites to see to give you an idea of blog possibilities. In addition to the essential how-to, it fills you in on:

• The blogosphere, blog culture and etiquette, snarks, macrologues, and more
• Moblogs that let you post entries remotely using your portable computer, PDA, or cell phone
• Buying a domain through a registrar such as Network Solutions, Register.com, or Go Daddy
• MP3 blogs, vlogs (videoblogs), photoblogging, audioblogging, podcasting, and more

You know you have something to say, whether it’s heavy stuff or just your thought for the day. Make your opinions known. Get your photos shown. With Blogging For Dummies, you’ll soon be blogging with the best of ‘em.

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Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

Book description

Author: Sylvie Devilette, Anne Martinez-Saiz, and Nuit de Chine
Publisher: Reporters Without Borders (2006)
ISBN-10: 2915536368

Book quote

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help those who are either excited or worried or disturstful of blogs. It provides handy tips and technical advise.

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. One thing’s for sure: they’re rocking the foundations of the media in countries as different as the United States, China and Iran. It’s too soon to really know what to think of blogs. We’ve been reading newspapers, watching TV and listening to the radio for decades now and we’ve learned how to immediately tell what’s news and what’s comment, to distinguish a tabloid “human interest” magazine from a serious one and an entertainment programme from a documentary. We don’t have such antennae to figure out blogs. These “online diaries” are even more varied than the mainstream media and it’s hard to know which of them is a news site, which a personal forum or one that does serious investigation or one that’s presenting junk evidence. It’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some bloggers will gradually develop their own ethical standards, to become more credible and win public confidence. But the Internet is still full of unreliable information and people exchanging insults. A blog gives everyone, regardless of education or technical skill, the chance to publish material. This means boring or disgusting blogs will spring up as fast as good and interesting ones.

But blogging is a powerful tool of freedom of expression that has enthused millions of ordinary people. Passive consumers of information have become energetic participants in a new kind of journalism – what US blog pioneer Dan Gillmor calls “grassroots journalism … by the people, for the people” (see chapter on “What ethics should bloggers have?”). Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest. Plenty of bloggers have been hounded or thrown in prison. One of the contributors to this handbook, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for posting several messages online that criticised the Iranian regime. His story illustrates how some bloggers see what they do as a duty and a necessity, not just a hobby. They feel they are the eyes and ears of thousands of other Internet users.

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Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them

Amazon's Book description

• Author: Bob Walsh
• Paperback: 351 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (February 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590596919
• ISBN-13: 978-1590596913
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1 inches

Almost overnight, blogging has become a social, political, and business force to be reckoned with. Your fellow students, workers, and competitors are joining the blogosphere--and making money, influencing elections, getting hired, growing market share, and having fun--to the tune of 8,000 new bloggers a day.

Clear Blogging sets out to answer in nontechnical terms what blogging has to offer and why and how you should blog. If you've never read a blog, but you keep hearing that term on the news, Clear Blogging will show you why blogging has shaken up mainstream media, and how a blogger can end up on CNN. If you're just starting to read blogs, Clear Blogging is your native guide to the blogosphere, covering how to get the best, most interesting information with the least amount of time and effort. The main course of Clear Blogging shows what you stand to gain from blogging, and how you can go from your first post to being welcomed aboard the blogosphere's A-list.

Whether you're already blogging or you're considering it, you'll want to get a copy of this book because it

• Covers how blogging can improve your job prospects, professional practice, business revenue, company reputation, and the world you live in
• Includes over 50 interviews with successful bloggers who are influencing products, policy makers, potential employers, and millions of the general public--all while earning an online reputation and real profits
• Shows you how to apply the best practices of news gathering to build your blog's reputation and brand
• Is heavy on the specific benefits of blogging and light on the technological aspects

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