Blogging Away!

Blogging Away!

Blogger Homage

These weblogs are a fascinating thing. The traffic to (and among) them is also a matter of some intrigue.

This is a Manila [1] powered website. What a useful, intuitive, and incredibly easy-to-use application it is. Do you want a weblog? Want to recommend the concept to someone? Again, very simple: send them over to Weblogs.com [2].

If the idea is appealing, there's a link, appropriate and to the point. One just clicks on I Want One [3] fills in the required fields, and BINGO! Your 'blog, off and running!

The software, the application, the kit, the caboodle, the whole enchillada emanates from Userland [4], which defines itself in that link [4] this way:

UserLand is a technology and publishing company focused on the Web as a writing environment and a medium of high-integrity journalism.

One can start one's own 'blog in the space of about ten minutes. Of course, once one is serious and gets down to composing, playing around with the layout and graphics, filling in the various blanks and such, it is well beyond ten minutes. Maybe an hour invested to simply start, play around a little, get one's feet wet.

If there's any apprehension, about the look, the content, the ethereal feel of the space... so much so as to be reluctant to open it up for general viewing, one can go to the Editors Only area and limit site views to a specific few.

Support Abounds!

There is an opt-in e-mail group, Manila-Newbies. Bloggers and users of Manila apps share questions, asnwers, suggestions, queries, concerns, et al. My own questions and requests for help have been answered -- on a 100% basis! -- and other bloggers' areas of discussion have offered a nugget here, an idea there, a solution or a method which would otherwise have escaped me.

Want to see it? No problem. Send an e-mail [5] to Userland and the auto-return message offers you a ton of options. Want to receive all the "public" posts? Prefer them in Digest form? Want to post your questions publicly or not? The choice is yours. In Userland, the user sets the standards. Pretty cool, I think.

Traffic Questions

Traffic to the site is a matter of great curiosity to me. How did you learn about it? Do you visit it regularly, or just now, then, and again? Or is this a first visit?

Do you check out the links? Do you do so while reading, or after a perusal, go back and click on some of the links?

Why do some visitors "join" the blog, and others not?

What are the reasons to return to a blog? How important is layout, as opposed to --or in addition to-- content? Do you bookmark the blog?

Do you have a schedule of blogs to visit (or view) on a regular basis? If there is a regular basis, is it weekly, daily, every few days, just on weekends, only from home (not at the office) (or vice-versa)?

Please share [6] with me your answers or opinions to some of these questions. And let me know if you want the correspondence kept on a one-to-one basis, or if I can use it (quote it)here. Do you want attribution? Do you want no attribution at all? The choice is yours.

This is an evolving, emerging,learning experience. Please be a part of it. You already participate by visiting and reading the blog. Now, please, interact!

And thank you. For reading this, visiting the site, and being a part of this bloggery, in various ways.

More is coming -- soon.

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Credit Where Due

To learn more about the soul and psyche of weblogging, go to the source, so to speak. Dave Winer [7] drives and steers the "Mission Weblog" (among other things). Dave has interesting things to say about weblogs, software, links, and credit for those links. Read his blog [8] to see his thoughts on the topic of crediting sources [8].

Apparently Dave is a Met fan. We note this for the sake of perspective, of course. Anyone who is a Baseball Fan scores extra points in my book, as readers of this site so well know.