What is a blog?

A blog is an online journal where we can document our opinions and advice. It is an online portal where you can find writings on anything or everything. Here is the terminology associated with blogging.

Blogging

The writing task of a blog is called blogging.

Blogger

The people who blog are called bloggers.

Blog posts

A blog consists of separate entries which are called blog posts.

Blog page

They are the information pages on a blog which tell about the blog and what to find in it and contact the blogger. They are writer exactly like blog posts but are displayed separately.

SEO

SEO stand for Search Engine Optimisation. It refers to how your blog ranks when someone searches a keyword relevant to your blog. In simple words, it is the thing that helps your blog to reach the first page of Google search.

Keywords

Keywords are the terms which are likely to be searched by people in search engines. Suppose you are writing a blog post on how to take care of your pets then your keyword here is pet care. You must include the keyword in your posts so that people who search Google for pet care can reach your blog.

Visitors

People who reads your blog.

Traffic

The volume of visitors which visit the blog.

Blogging platform

Anyone can open a blog with or without the knowledge of technical things. But how? It is simple. Blogs are created by using blogging platforms. It is online software which lets you create your own online space. Two most popular blogging platforms are Blogger (by Google) and WordPress (by Wordpress).

Blogosphere

The network of blogs and bloggers.

Free or hosted blog

These are the free blogs which are created on a blogging platform’s server. They are hosted by the platform and you get a subdomain like www.xyz.blogspot.in or www.abc.wordpress.com. These free blogs come with limitations and if you are taking blogging seriously, you must stay away from free blogs.

Domain

The domain is the custom name for your website. They generally starts with www. and ends with extensions like .com, .in, .gov, .co, .net,.org etc.

Self-hosted blogs

These are the blogs which have custom domain names like www.xyz.com. They are hosted on independent servers provided by web hosting companies. You can easily customize such blogs according to your need. If you want to make money from blogging by displaying ads on your blog, it is essential that you have a self-hosted professional blog. Even brands love to work with self-hosted blogs more.

Please note that the course Blogging Business will teach you how to create a self-hosted blog using a custom domain and WordPress as a blogging platform. The following terms are associated with WordPress blogs which are self-hosted.

Theme

The theme is the blog design you choose for your blog. There are free and paid themes which you can use to design your blog. You do not need coding knowledge to design blogs. The themes are developed by best web developers and the only thing you need to do is to customize the theme according to your wish.

Plugins

If the theme is the design of your house, I mean blog; plugins are the essentials things like electricity, water supply, basic amenities. They help you to modify the theme and speed up your blog by doing things behind ‘the scene’. They are codes simplified which are used to increase the blog’s functionality. WordPress maintains their own Plugin directory from where you can choose your required plugins. They are mostly free to download but there are paid plugins developed specifically for some tasks.

Widgets

They are the drop and drag feature WordPress offers to design your blog. They are mostly confined to the sidebar, bottom, and top of your blog’s web page. They allow you to display featured things on your blog like recent posts, comments, archives, categories etc. Every WordPress theme comes with its own set of widgets.

Dashboard

The inside of your blog where you write your blog posts, approve comments and see the statistics of your blog.

Category

Categories are the section of the blog under which you publish your posts.

Archives

Archives are the database where your posts are documented month wise.